Author: Linda Rozumalski

Audio Recording

We continue the letter dictated by Paul, Silas, and Timothy to the Christian community they began in Thessalonica. They are writing from Corinth after having been run out of town – and several other towns.

[ch2   ¹⁷As for us, brothers and sisters, when, for a short time, we were made orphans by being separated from you—in person, not in heart—we longed with great eagerness to see you face to face. ¹⁸For we wanted to come to you—certainly I, Paul, wanted to again and again—but Satan blocked our way. ¹⁹For what is our hope or joy or crown of boasting before our Lord Jesus at his coming? Is it not you? ²⁰Yes, you are our glory and joy!”]

“Therefore when we could bear it no longer, we decided to be left alone in Athens; ²and we sent Timothy, our brother and co-worker for God in proclaiming the gospel of Christ, to strengthen and encourage you for the sake of your faith, ³so that no one would be shaken by these persecutions. Indeed, you yourselves know that this is what we are destined for. ⁴In fact, when we were with you, we told you beforehand that we were to suffer persecution; so it turned out, as you know. ⁵For this reason, when I could bear it no longer, I sent to find out about your faith; I was afraid that somehow the tempter had tempted you and that our labour had been in vain.

6 But Timothy has just now come to us from you, and has brought us the good news of your faith and love. He has told us also that you always remember us kindly and long to see us—just as we long to see you. ⁷For this reason, brothers and sisters, during all our distress and persecution we have been encouraged about you through your faith. ⁸For we now live, if you continue to stand firm in the Lord. ⁹How can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy that we feel before our God because of you? ¹⁰Night and day we pray most earnestly that we may see you face to face and restore whatever is lacking in your faith.

11 Now may our God and Father himself and our Lord Jesus direct our way to you. ¹²And may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, just as we abound in love for you. ¹³And may he so strengthen your hearts in holiness that you may be blameless before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.” 

This is quite obviously a love letter. It is enthusiastic, surprised by joy (to borrow a title from C.S.Lewis), effusive in Paul’s pleasure and relief to hear how well things are going with these fledglings. He doesn’t seem to have expected it.

Thessalonica was a thoroughly imperialized city, committed to the ethos and politics of the Roman Empire. The cultural narrative is the imperial narrative, dominated by the emperor and his family, with their claims to divinity, imperishability, and omnipotence.

The message brought by Paul and Silas is an invitation and a challenge to, instead, align one’s life story with the narrative of Jesus, the one who was crucified in weakness and humiliation by the Roman state. This required more than a leap of faith, it was a gulf of dissonance for Jew or pagan converts to bridge.

Nevertheless, we hear in Acts that “Some of them were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, as did a great many of the devout Greeks and not a few of the leading women” (17:4). Here in Paul’s letter, he gives credit to the Spirit of God, priming them for his teaching, and notes that they received the message so wholeheartedly that they had become an example throughout the region, turning to God from idols, to serve a living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead.”

The opponents of Paul and Silas claim, “They are all acting contrary to the decrees of the emperor, saying that there is another king named Jesus”.  Something in the message concerning Jesus and the small community of faith’s new behavior is upsetting to the powerful in the city.  Idols permeated every level of city life: their homes, work, religion, economics, politics. The newly converted Thessalonians, this gathered community of disciples, were redefining family, economy and support networks. Relationships and behavior changed as they worked out together what it meant to follow in the way of Jesus instead of empire.

The population at large is often threatened when even small groups begin to re-evaluate their allegiance to the ruling powers and transfer their commitments. Stability and the status quo are reassuring norms for most of us, even if injustice and inequality are the price we have to pay. This has become quite obvious in our current, and on-going, grappling with racism and the mythology of white supremacy.

It must have been baffling. The death of Jesus by crucifixion was like a public service announcement: the Empire is in charge. Crucifixion was a potent reminder of the impressive power of Empire. But when Paul declares the gospel concerning God raising Jesus from that death, he speaks of another—and greater—power in the world that can usurp imperial authority, that calls into question imperial claims to its (previously undisputed) power over the affairs of nations, communities, and individuals. And ears perk up.

Jesus has been raised from the dead and so everything changes. There is a power at work that is more powerful than any earthly ruler – and Paul and his companions have brought an invitation to shift over, to live within Jesus’ story, to take your place in a new narrative. The status quo of Thessalonica sent him packing, but even so, the message, the devotion to one another and to this God had taken strong root.

Paul writes, “How can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy that we feel … ” and continues with love that is increasing and abounding, with the earnest desire that Paul and the Thessalonians should all be reunited. If we were to read just these few verses, it would be easy to believe the popular — and very attractive — idea that the Christian life is inevitably filled with love and joy and thankfulness and peace. And in one sense, it is. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy or protected or guaranteed.

In fact, as we keep reading we hear that the Thessalonians are suffering; Paul, Timothy and Silas are suffering. The trials and persecutions experienced by the Thessalonian church will increase in measure to their increased imitation of the life, love, and reality of Christ.

This apprentice community rooted themselves and their relationships in a narrative and practice of love. And that commitment to each other will ensure their survival in the midst of suffering. Paul writes to the Corinthians that without love we are nothing – a noisy gong or clanging cymbal, that in the life and example of Jesus, love is to be demonstrated in practical ways in the community. Jesus made clear that the main thing is to love God, and to love our neighbor as we love ourself. And John Lennon sang, “All you need is love, yah, yah, yah, yah, yah. It’s easy!” Well, maybe not. To be rooted in love and to practice love comforts body and soul in the midst of difficulty, but growth in compassion and empathy and spirit can/probably ought to find us questioning ourselves and society in the midst of complacency. It is the power of shifting narratives, of asking new questions about values, expectations, dreams. It is the power, of asking What if?

The magic question Barb gave us in Lent is What will it take? That’s the pragmatist’s question. Or maybe it’s the second question. The dreamer’s magic question is, What if?  What if we changed the narrative. What if we changed the goal of life from winning to cherishing, from consuming to observing, from using to loving. What if (for example) we made a fuss about plastics out of love for the creatures that share our space? What if we refused to participate in the usual put-downs and demonizing and limited ourselves to the more difficult task of introspection, examining biases and behaving as we wish others would? 

Imitation, someone said, is highest form of flattery. We might try to be imitators of Jesus, to flatter God with love and kindness and courage expressed for our neighbor and world.  But what if, in the incarnation, God is imitating human life, is flattering us, showing us the value and potential and power of being fully human… a little lower than the angels as psalm 8 says…  Does it change our sense of purpose or responsibility, I wonder, if we shift narratives from being the striving imitator to being the example? In Paul’s understanding and in the Bible’s truth, we are both. Created by and for love. Grateful to God and graceful to everyone else. But, responsible to be what we are created to be, not simply to receive.

Take a moment to bring into your heart’s mind some one, some thing, some place that you love absolutely beyond reason.

What would it take to protect or preserve or promote the thriving of that beloved one or thing or place? 

What if you have the power to make it known?

Pastor Linda

These few weeks between Easter and Pentecost are a good time to read from the Apostle Paul – even though he’s a challenge in many ways. I think he is more pertinent now than ever, especially if we pay attention to how he said what he did, not just what he said. The two sources we have for information about Paul are the book of Acts and Paul’s own writing. Acts gives us the itinerary that puts his letters in context. So I’m going to give history and context along the way.

1 Thessalonians is the oldest New Testament writing. This serves as a reminder that the gospels were all written long after the stories they tell took place, based on the Jesus tradition that was passed along through first person accounts, oral history and letters and recollections that are mostly lost to time. Last week you heard Paul’s dramatic conversion on the road to Damascus. We don’t know the actual timing of it, but it happened months to a year after Jesus died. Paul himself was likely killed before the first gospel was written, so all of his writing, the interpretation of who Jesus was, comes first. The gospels tell us about Jesus and God; the letters Paul left behind tell us about the significance of the resurrection to the life of faith – at least for his context and time.

Paul had already been busy traveling and teaching by the time he wrote this first letter in the late 40’s. He had companions along the way, changing from time to time – Timothy, Silas, Barnabas, Phoebe and others. They were often run out of town by Jews offended at his message, or Romans offended for the sake of the emperor, and that is the catalyst for this letter. After hurriedly leaving Thessalonica, he eventually ended up in Corinth and stayed there for two years. From Corinth he sent Timothy back to check up on them, to see how the community was faring. The report was quite encouraging!

So we begin his letter to the church. (1 Thessalonians: 1-2)

Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy, To the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus  Christ:

Grace to you and peace. 

    We always give thanks to God for all of you and mention you in our prayers, constantly ³remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labour of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. ⁴For we know, brothers and sisters beloved by God, that he has chosen you, ⁵because our message of the gospel came to you not in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction; just as you know what kind of people we proved to be among you for your sake. ⁶And you became imitators of us and of the Lord, for in spite of persecution you received the word with joy inspired by the Holy Spirit, ⁷so that you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia. ⁸For the word of the Lord has sounded forth from you not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but in every place where your faith in God has become known, so that we have no need to speak about it. ⁹For the people of those regions report about us what kind of welcome we had among you, and how you turned to God from idols, to serve a living and true God, ¹⁰and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead—Jesus, who rescues us from the wrath that is coming.

  You yourselves know, brothers and sisters, that our coming to you was not in vain, ²but though we had already suffered and been shamefully maltreated at Philippi, as you know, we had courage in our God to declare to you the gospel of God in spite of great opposition. ³For our appeal does not spring from deceit or impure motives or trickery, ⁴but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the message of the gospel, even so we speak, not to please mortals, but to please God who tests our hearts. ⁵As you know and as God is our witness, we never came with words of flattery or with a pretext for greed; ⁶nor did we seek praise from mortals, whether from you or from others, ⁷though we might have made demands as apostles of Christ. But we were gentle among you, like a nurse tenderly caring for her own children. ⁸So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us.

 You remember our labour and toil, brothers and sisters; we worked night and day, so that we might not burden any of you while we proclaimed to you the gospel of God. ¹⁰You are witnesses, and God also, how pure, upright, and blameless our conduct was towards you believers. ¹¹As you know, we dealt with each one of you like a father with his children, ¹²urging and encouraging you and pleading that you should lead a life worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory.

 We also constantly give thanks to God for this, that when you received the word of God that you heard from us, you accepted it not as a human word but as what it really is, God’s word, which is also at work in you believers. ¹⁴For you, brothers and sisters, became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus that are in Judea, for you suffered the same things from your own compatriots as they did from the Jews, ¹⁵who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets, and drove us out; they displease God and oppose everyone ¹⁶by hindering us from speaking to the Gentiles so that they may be saved. Thus they have constantly been filling up the measure of their sins; but God’s wrath has overtaken them at last.

 As for us, brothers and sisters, when, for a short time, we were made orphans by being separated from you—in person, not in heart—we longed with great eagerness to see you face to face. ¹⁸For we wanted to come to you—certainly I, Paul, wanted to again and again—but Satan blocked our way. ¹⁹For what is our hope or joy or crown of boasting before our Lord Jesus at his coming? Is it not you? ²⁰Yes, you are our glory and joy!”

A word of God, a word of life….. thanks be to God.

Two things popped out at me as I read this. 

First, is the format of the letter itself. There was an expected form for letters in the ancient world. I read about this in one of my seminary textbooks. What made me smile as I read it was remembering my mother’s instructions when she sat me down to write to my grandparents, or thank you notes for birthday and Christmas gifts. My mom used this same ancient formula.

Here it is from my textbook: “The general structure of a letter in antiquity began with the name of the sender, followed by the name of the receiver, and a greeting – often an inquiry or wish about their health. Then followed a personal section, often recalling some past association or fond memory, and next the reason for the letter, usually a request of some sort, or thanks for a gift given. Letters regularly ended with salutations to mutual friends and a closing wish.”    Exactly.

I wonder how many of us learned the art of letters and thank you notes at the kitchen table under our mother’s tutelage. The second thing I locked in, and maybe only because I had Mom in mind at this point, was the reference Paul makes to wet nurses. He reminds the Thessalonians of their close connection: “We were gentle among you, like a nurse tenderly caring for her own children. ⁸So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us.” This is a lovely sentence, a tender theology, and quite unexpected for many of you (I imagine) coming as it is from Paul. 

But this is a terrific example of what I meant when I said it’s important to hear how he writes, how he teaches, and not only what he says. Paul will speak in whatever way, whatever genre, whatever imagery he believes connects the message of Christ crucified and risen to his audience. He says he strives to be all things to all people – what he means by that is that he will do anything within his ability to get this message across, to help Gentiles and Jews, Greeks, Romans, and pagans, men, women, slave and free to understand that this Jesus, this God, this salvation and redemption is for them, that it is for all.

You may have also noticed that in the next paragraph, he talks as a father: “ ¹¹As you know, we dealt with each one of you like a father with his children, ¹²urging and encouraging you and pleading that you should lead a life worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory.”

But today is Mother’s Day, so I’m sticking with that. 

In the past, I’ve made a point of not preaching about it. I’ve mentioned Mother’s Day only in prayers of the people because I know how conflicted our parental relationships can be. But as I’ve gotten older in this job of preaching, I’ve gotten more interested in speaking to what actually connects to our lives, and less interested in preaching what is careful, pious, expected or recycled. 

To that point, we have all had mothers. Some of you, I’m sure, identify with Paul’s comments: “We were gentle among you.… ⁸So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share our own selves, because you have become very dear to us.” Some of your mothers, some of you as mothers, or as surrogate mothers, are gentle, self-giving, tender-hearted. Some did not have mothers like that.   

Mother’s Day is as often a painful reminder of loss, of heartache, of abuse, of distance as it is of joyful connection and gratitude. It’s hard to know what to say that won’t leave someone out or accentuate a painful memory. But we have those feelings and ignoring them doesn’t make them less real. Here in the congregation we have mothers who are estranged from children, who have lost a child. Some of you have lost your mothers too early or tragically or unexpectedly or after caring for them for a long time. 

Death is grief and relief and guilt – there are stories or conversations or images that circle around, that are brought to mind with an unexpected scent of perfume or someone’s unknowing remark. How do we live with our mothers and how do we live without them? What wouldn’t we do for them and what have they done to us? How has the way we were mothered affected the relationships we’ve formed years later, our own parenting or partnering? How do we get over our mothers? How can we best support the mothers in our midst? How can we forgive and accept our own job of mothering?

Like many of you I find myself in the middle of all of these questions.

After church and a meeting today, I’m going to Minocqua to be with my 96 year old mom. Last weekend, I was in Duluth for a baby shower for our son and daughter-in-law and was given a wonderful gift when Andi walked over to me, took my hand and placed it on her 7 month pregnant belly, saying, “Here, can you feel her hiccups?” 

I know I’ve made mistakes as a mother to my three children. I’m reminded of them now and then by said children, and there are some mistakes I know, but keep to myself, down deep out of the range of words. I’m aware of the effects of my mom’s generational style of mothering on me. I’ve also watched her change her opinions – enlarge her compassion for mental health issues, for gay and lesbian sexuality. She is able to look critically at her privileged white life. I admire that more than anything else about her.  I learned, as I became a mom, to pray that I could be who each of my children needed me to be, that I would connect to each of them and their unique personalities, that I would listen to what they said and to what they weren’t saying, that I could be guided by what they needed and not what I expected them to be. 

I know I’ve also made mistakes – lots of them – in mothering this congregation. You can’t possibly know the love and regard I have for you by my actions and inactions. But I’ve felt, do feel, that that’s part of my role here. To love you and offer what I have to give to help you grow – to help us all grow up in spirit and faith and hope.

Being a parent, (I can only speak to being a mother), isn’t easy. Neither is being mothered by the mother we were given. I kind of love that Paul brings this wet nurse imagery to his letter. There are men and women who nurture, who inspire, encourage, sustain us all along our lifespans in ways and at times our own mother’s couldn’t do. You all take on that role within your circle of influence and within the church.

I feel that I’m balanced in the center this year. I still have my mom, but sometimes I mother her. I have children who still need me, but sometimes – let’s be honest, it’s mostly Marnie – sometimes they mother me. I have a compassionate, lovely daughter-in-law who will hopefully have a healthy, safe birth in the next month – and, although I can’t get my head around it yet, our son will largely be a stay at home dad and will practice his mothering and fathering skills and continue the cycle of mistakes and love and trials and joy.

Anne Lamott is a writer who describes the difficulty of Mother’s Day in her characteristically humorous and blunt way. This is just a bit of what she writes:
“This is for those of you who are dreading Mothers Day, because you had an awful mother, or wanted but didn’t get to have kids, or your kids ended up breaking your hearts. If you love the day, and have or had a great mom, and kids who have brought you incredible pride and joy, maybe skip this:…

Mother’s Day celebrates a huge lie about the value of women: that mothers are superior beings, that they have done more with their lives and chosen a more difficult path. Ha! Every woman’s path is difficult, and many mothers were as equipped to raise children as wire monkey mothers. I say that without judgment: It is, sadly, true. An unhealthy mother’s love is withering.

The illusion is that mothers are automatically happier, more fulfilled and complete. But the craziest, grimmest people this Sunday will be the mothers themselves, stuck herding their own mothers and weeping children and husbands’ mothers into seats at restaurants. These mothers do not want a box of chocolate. These mothers are on a diet.

Mothering has been the richest experience of my life, but I am still opposed to Mother’s Day. It perpetuates the dangerous idea that all parents are somehow superior to non-parents. 

Don’t get me wrong: There were times I could have literally died of love for my son, and I’ve felt stoned on his rich, desperate love for me. But I bristle at the whispered lie that you can know this level of love and self-sacrifice only if you are a parent. We talk about “loving one’s child” as if a child were a mystical unicorn. Ninety-eight percent of American parents secretly feel that if you have not had and raised a child, your capacity for love is somehow diminished. Ninety-eight percent of American parents secretly believe that non-parents cannot possibly know what it is to love unconditionally, to be selfless, to put yourself at risk for the gravest loss. 

But my main gripe about Mother’s Day is that it feels incomplete and imprecise. The main thing that ever helped mothers was other people mothering them; a chain of mothering that keeps the whole shebang afloat. I am the woman I grew to be partly in spite of my mother, and partly because of the extraordinary love of her best friends, my own best friends’ mothers, and from surrogates, many of whom were not women at all but gay men. I have loved them my entire life, even after their passing. And we are all mothers.

You want to give me chocolate and flowers? Great. I love them both. I just don’t want them out of guilt, and I don’t want them if you’re not going to give them to all the people who helped mother our children. But if you are going to include everyone, then make mine something like M&M’s, and maybe flowers you picked yourself, even from my own garden, the cut stems wrapped in wet paper towels, then tin foil and a waxed-paper bag from my kitchen drawers. I don’t want something special. I want something beautifully plain. Like everything else, it can fill me only if it is ordinary and available to all.”

That sounds to me a lot like incarnational love – ordinary, beautiful, and available to all. I know it’s hard for many to talk about the relationships that matter so much. I hope that whatever your connection to motherhood, you are able to lean into it today – not to wallow in the same old narrative, but perhaps look from a new slant, and find people who support you and love you and sit with you in the complexity of feelings and memory. I hope you will share your stories. This, too, is a way we love our neighbor as ourselves.

Pastor Linda

 

Audio Recording

I’m not quite done with Mark and his gospel. You know how there are people you listen to, or certain authors you like to read, or actors you are interested in – if they’re in a movie you’re more likely to watch it? Well, nerd that I am, I have theologians I follow, or at least get oddly excited at finding something they’ve written. Dave Fredrickson is one of them. He is a professor at Luther Seminary and was my Greek teacher, and because of the ‘beyond tradition’ way he taught and thought, I kept taking classes from him. So… when I found an article he wrote about Mark as I was snuffling through the web, I printed it off and have held it in reserve for today. 

Dr. Fredrickson has specialized in the cultural context of the New Testament. What were people reading in Jesus’ day? What plays were they attending, what is written about their relationships or livelihoods, what was being imported or exported, what does their artwork tell us about their values or ideas? What importance to our understanding of scripture does their understanding of our physical bodies make? All kinds of fascinating avenues of thought. But, my interest today was caught by the title of his article, “Nature’s Lament for Jesus.”

This is Earth Day Sunday and the 2nd week of Resurrection when we typically read of the reappearance of Jesus to his disciples. In Luke, it’s the road to Emmaus. John has several sightings – Thomas poking his finger into Jesus’ gashed side, and my favorite, when Jesus serves up a shore breakfast for the fishermen. But since Mark doesn’t end that way, I’m free to consider nature’s lament, and take you out of our world view and a little bit into Jesus’ world view – or at least what can be deduced from the remains of their day.

We begin in Mark 15:25 

It was nine o’clock in the morning when they crucified him.

33 When it was noon, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. ³⁴At three o’clock Jesus cried out with a loud voice, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ 

³⁷Then Jesus gave a loud cry and breathed his last. ³⁸And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. 

These details have always fascinated me.  The sky goes dark and the curtain tears. Traditional interpretation says that the temple curtain is what separated God from humans, the holy of holies from our world of sin. The High Priest was the only one who could go behind the inner curtain, and only once a year, on the day of Atonement. 

The tearing of the curtain at Jesus’ death meant God wasn’t confined or hidden away, but entered into our world through the Spirit to be with us, in trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  

There’s nothing wrong with that understanding. I like it. But when Dave Fredrickson says there’s another way to think about it, I want to know what it might be. 

This is what he proposes. “I believe we make better sense of the strange circumstances surrounding Jesus’ death if we think of the curtain as a visual representation of the cosmos. Then the tearing of the curtain becomes one of two events (the other is the darkening of the sun) that express nature’s grief over Jesus’ death.”

So, first a bit about the curtain. This was the second temple, built after the Babylonian exile. There aren’t as many descriptors of it as there were of the original temple and it lacked much of the grandeur and gilding, but still it was magnificent. 

Writing in the second century B.C.E., Aristeas tells of his journey to Jerusalem and what he saw there. The temple was “built with a lavishness and sumptuousness beyond all precedent,”  he writes. From a description of the magnificent doorposts and lintel he goes on to the curtain, which “corresponded in every respect to the door; especially when the fabric was kept in unceasing motion by the current of wind (pneuma, breath in Greek). Since it was from below, the curtain bulged out from the bottom to its fullest extent, the spectacle was highly agreeable and hard to tear oneself from. It was as if one witnessed the cosmos breathing.”

Josephus, a contemporary of Mark, a priest and historian, says something similar, 

“Before the golden doors hung a veil of equal length, of Babylonian tapestry, with embroidery of blue and fine linen, of scarlet also and purple, wrought with marvelous skill. Nor was the mixture of materials without its mystic meaning: it typified the universe. For the scarlet seemed emblematical of fire, the fine linen of the earth, the blue of the air, and the purple of the sea.… On this tapestry was portrayed a panorama of the heavens.” 

Aristeas and Josephus indicate that by the first century the temple curtain had a reputation, a public way of being perceived, as a representation of the cosmos. As Jesus dies, this cosmos was ripped in two from top to bottom, the heavens torn apart.

Tearing or ripping garments was a way the ancients expressed grief. “Rend your hearts and not your clothing,” said the prophet Joel. Dave Fredrickson goes on to build more of a case for this, but his point is that, in Mark’s time, the curtain torn from above is nature in lament. 

“When it was noon, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon” (Mark 15:33). The sun’s behavior is another example of nature grieving. In Greek art and artifacts there are scenes of trees gently bending over the dying or dead.  In poetry, nightingale, swan, hill, cow, bull, tree, flock, hive, sea—all mourn a lover’s death. Entities in nature express grief without the aid of language. They do impossible things. They act against their own nature. In the psalms, trees clap their hands and dry lands gush with springs when they’re happy. Out of sorrow “the trees cast their fruit on the ground” and flowers wither, flocks give no milk, bees no honey. The Apostle Paul writes that the earth is groaning in labor pains. Nature was an active, eloquent agent in their world view. 

So, citing poetry, art and contemporary writers of Mark, Dr Fredrickson makes his case that the dimming of the noonday sun and the tearing of the temple curtain expresses nature’s grief over Jesus’ death. 

One thing that’s interesting about this is that, although nature was noisy with grief, God was silent.   We overheard God claiming Jesus when the heavens are torn apart at his baptism and again in the mountaintop transfiguration, but when Jesus is on the cross, there is no divine word. Perhaps it is a grief too deep for words? Perhaps, through the many and varied ways Mark includes nature in the mysterious acts of God in Jesus throughout the gospel – multiplying bread and fish, stilling the wind and waves, for two examples, we are prepared to see God present in grief in the world and not distant in heaven or behind a curtain.

So, does this matter? 

One of the tenants of Grundtvigian theology is that God is self revealing in nature, that we can discover God – not simply something about God, but truly God – in the natural world. If that is true, and God is present, incarnate in creation, then nature’s lament, earth’s groaning, is God’s lament – in Mark’s world view and in ours.

The exploitive and self-centered way in which we have ‘cared’ for the earth, the creatures, the water, the soil and sky is cause for lament. And not only lament, but repentance, sudden and abrupt change of behavior. And if God is present in nature – not contained by nature, but present somehow – then loving God with all our heart and strength and soul has something to do with our relationship and responsibility to the natural world. How will we respond to the earth’s lament? It is not only practical, or political or economic, but it is a statement of faith and an act of love for God and for our neighbor as ourselves and for the little ones in our midst.

• * Nature’s Lament for Jesus  by DAVID E. FREDRICKSON, Word & World Volume 26, Number 1 Winter 2006

Audio Recording

Audio Recording

Mark 14:12-21

 On the first day of Unleavened Bread, when the Passover lamb is sacrificed, his disciples said to him, ‘Where do you want us to go and make the preparations for you to eat the Passover?’ ¹³So he sent two of his disciples, saying to them, ‘Go into the city, and a man carrying a jar of water will meet you; follow him, ¹⁴and wherever he enters, say to the owner of the house, “The Teacher asks, Where is my guest room where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?” ¹⁵He will show you a large room upstairs, furnished and ready. Make preparations for us there.’ ¹⁶So the disciples set out and went to the city, and found everything as he had told them; and they prepared the Passover meal.

17 When it was evening, he came with the twelve. ¹⁸And when they had taken their places and were eating, Jesus said, ‘Truly I tell you, one of you will betray me, one who is eating with me.’ ¹⁹They began to be distressed and to say to him one after another, ‘Surely, not I?’ ²⁰He said to them, ‘It is one of the twelve, one who is dipping bread into the bowl with me. ²¹For the Son of Man goes as it is written of him, but woe to that one by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would have been better for that one not to have been born.’

   It’s believed that the gospel of Mark was written about 35 years after the events of this Passover night took place. It was the first of the four gospels to be written, but it’s helpful to remember that all of Paul’s activity, and his letters to the small Christian communities he helped form, that all came first.        

   In fact, by the time the gospel of Mark was written, Peter, and Jesus’ brother James, and the apostle Paul have all been killed – probably under the persecution of Nero. The precise date and author of Mark are unknown, but scholars’ consensus is that this gospel was likely written during the Jewish-Roman war that lasted from 66 to 74 AD. The final Jewish revolt perpetrated by the Zealots called down the military power and brutality of Rome. The temple and Jerusalem are either in ruins or are in their final days when Mark writes. So, even though the narration is in present tense bringing us into the story taking place around us, it is written with the knowledge and perspective of later realities of the war and the ongoing persecution of early Christians both by Jewish leaders and Rome. The urgency of the gospel was very real for the author and community of Mark. They believed that the end was near.

   As a consequence of persecution and the passage of more than three decades, the eye-witness accounts and first hand experiences of those who actually knew Jesus have, by this time, become stories that are told, taught, and circulated as a way of remembering Jesus’ life and his teaching, as a way of making sense of his shameful death, but also, and more importantly to the author, as a way of passing along the communities’ conviction that Jesus is who he finally said he was. The secret that he scolded and hushed up came out in the end. We will read his trial before the chief priests on Thursday, and will hear Jesus finally say, “I am. I am the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One.” That confession, coming at the end of Mark’s carefully crafted tale, is the revelation that should clarify the story. Finally, the insider perspective with which we as readers have been privileged is spoken into the character’s world. The mounting suspense and dissonance and secrecy and hostility will meet at point zero. Well, it almost happens.

  I actually don’t like to read the whole gospel. I suppose it’s funny then, that I’m a pastor and spend hours every week reading and writing about them and trying to figure them out. My favorite stories to watch in my free time are British murder mysteries. And I watch the same ones over and over and over again. I rewatch mysteries because I find comfort in knowing what’s coming, in being familiar with the story – there’s a certain companionship in familiar characters. But, I dread getting to this part of the gospel. As we approach it each year I feel it in the pit-of-my-stomach. I just don’t want to read it again. Foreknowledge and repetition that comfort me in British mysteries, don’t help with the gospel. Being familiar with the characters doesn’t help. 

  The cozy mysteries I enjoy are about detection, and gradual revelation, not the death. We don’t typically feel much for the victim or against the perpetrator; we care about the detectives. Mark, as storyteller, is the detective, giving us clues as we go – both about Jesus’ identity and what will befall him. But there’s no sense of triumph when the truth of each comes out. It’s more like the crossed stars of Romeo and Juliet. In spite of its mysterious nature, the gospel is a tragic love story. The disciples who need to hear Jesus say clearly, ‘I am the Messiah’, aren’t there to hear when he finally does. And the antagonists who force the question, don’t want to know, don’t believe him, and won’t repeat the message. So, the proclamation of good news ends in failure.  But, that is jumping ahead to Thursday and Friday.

   It was the first day of Unleavened Bread, the day the Passover lamb is sacrificed. The man with the water jug was there as Jesus said he would be. He led them to the master of the house as predicted. The upper room was available and furnished as Jesus said it would be. The meal is cooked. Jesus comes in with the twelve. They take their places, perform the rituals, and begin to eat. It is with this scene at the table that my dread begins. 

  It’s the intimacy, the sense of family, the expected trustworthiness and closeness of the scene that stays with us. The betrayal from within this close knit, well travelled troupe cuts deep. And it all takes place as Jesus said it would. 

  He knew Judas would betray him. Jesus knew Peter would, too, in fear for his life. And that the rest of the disciples would run for cover. Jesus knew he was heading into mortal danger alone.  Yet he sits calmly at the table, passes bread and dips it – does he watch the others’ hands? Is one hand trembling as it reaches forward? Jesus does not call Judas out as the others question and fuss. He eats with his betrayer anyway. And he loves the faithless, fearful ones anyway. 

  As tangled and tragic as the storylines are, Mark is still holding a few cards to his chest. There is a lot of Agatha Christie in the gospel. To borrow from her detective Poirot, it’s not what the gospel says, it’s what it says that matters.

  There are several threads or themes running through the gospel: Jesus’ foreknowledge is one. Secrecy surrounding his true identity is one. Opposition to Jesus is another – and began with the Herodians in chapter 3. Divine power is another one. Acts of God’s authority and healing power fill the first half of the book and then drop off abruptly. Jesus popularity among the people follows this arc. Meanwhile, opposition swells in the second half. 

  But from beginning to end, Jesus’ desire is to keep his identity hidden. And who knows what, when, is the captivating bit of detection and line of questioning that we as readers/hearers of the gospel are to discern. Why are secrecy and foreknowledge key to Mark’s story, how do they function? Were they storytelling devices common to the age? Or do they help us make sense of what would otherwise be simply a tragic tale?

  My feeling is that this last question is key. Jesus’ ability to predict that a colt would be tied up and available for his ride into Jerusalem, that the disciples would meet a man with a water jar, that Judas would betray him and Peter deny him is not only what the gospel says, but tells us what it is saying.

   Jesus predicted his death three times. These other predictions proved to be true. The events unfolded as he said they would. Therefore, his death will happen as he says. And, if that is trustworthy, it means that he goes to his suffering knowingly, intentionally, though not wanting it. And if his death follows the prediction, then so will his rising. That, too, will be trustworthy and true. We as audience have seen it all unfold, we’ve seen the disciples’ failings and are warned that it will get worse, that they are soon to forsake him. We have grave doubts that they have ever understood who he is and what it means to be a follower of the Christ who suffers. But we have seen God’s power aligned with Jesus, working through him, claiming him as God’s own. If no one in the story knows what we know, if the disciples scatter like quail chicks at the first sign of danger, and if even the women who have observed it all from the sidelines remain silent, then who is left with eyes to see or ears to hear? Who is left to tell of the consequence of God’s tender, powerful act of love? 

   Is it a mystery, or is it elementary, my dear Watson?

Audio Recording

Mark 14:1-11

It was two days before the Passover and the festival of Unleavened Bread. The chief priests and the scribes were looking for a way to arrest Jesus by stealth and kill him, for they said, ‘Not during the festival, or there may be a riot among the people.’

While he was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he sat at the table, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very costly ointment of nard, and she broke open the jar and poured the ointment on his head. But some were there who said to one another in anger, “Why was the ointment wasted in this way? For this ointment could have been sold for more than three hundred denarii, and the money given to the poor.”

But Jesus said, “Let her alone; why do you trouble her? She has performed a good service for me. For you always have the poor with you, and you can show kindness to them whenever you wish; but you will not always have me. She has done what she could; she has anointed my body beforehand for its burial. Truly I tell you, wherever the good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her.”

Then Judas Iscariot, who was one of the twelve, went to the chief priests in order to betray him to them. When they heard it, they were greatly pleased, and promised to give him money. So he began to look for an opportunity to betray him.

Chapter 14 starts a new chapter – quite literally – in Mark’s account of Jesus’ life. It’s not the first time we’ve heard that someone is out to get Jesus – it began with the Pharisees conspiring with Herodians in chapter 3. It’s been a motivation for Jesus’ constant movement in the gospel, but now that he is in Jerusalem, the stage is set and the tension is thick.

Maybe because of that, we tend to rush on ahead, not wanting to know, but not able to linger here in the hours before his arrest and trial. We were also warned in chapter 3 that Judas Iscariot, one of his twelve disciples, would betray him. We’ve been primed for this. Mark’s gospel has been called a passion narrative with a long introduction. The next few chapters are what we’ve been heading for all along. But Mark doesn’t want us to rush, to get it over with. He slows down the action, slows down time – and what he includes is here to be noticed. Once again, there’s a story within a story. 

Once again, a woman’s quiet action interrupts the predominant public narrative of males. Tucked in-between the scribes and Pharisees looking for a way to kill Jesus outside the public’s eye and his own disciple coming to their aid, is an unnamed, unknown woman who interrupts a meal.

Each of the four gospels includes a story of a woman anointing Jesus, but the details and timing vary quite a bit. Mark’s is significant not only because it’s the first time the story is told, but because she stands behind him and anoints his head. Anointing in this manner is what prophets did to Israel’s kings. Her anointing is what makes Jesus the Christ, the anointed one. Her action (and God’s). Mark gives us detail. An alabaster jar: white, translucent stone. An ointment made of nard: luxurious, expensive – made from the flowers of spikenard, a plant growing on the slopes of the Himalayan mountains and traded, transported by caravan – costly indeed, and precious, used drop by drop for calming massage or anointing bodies for burial. And this woman breaks the jar, pouring the entire contents over Jesus’ head. Fragrant, slow moving oil coating his hair, sinking down onto his scalp, into his beard, scenting his garments, filling the room, the entire house, with its mesmerizing scent. 

It is an act of extravagance. Ecstatic devotion. Like the poor widow, this woman with no name has given it all, holding nothing back. Yes, it could have been sold. Yes, the money could have been given to the poor as a generous blessing. That was what Jesus told the rich man to do when he came looking for the way to eternal life. The critics around the room were right, but they missed the point of devotion, missed the symbolic act of anointing, missed the moment of compassionate, outpouring love given days before Jesus’ own giving. They missed the complex, ephemeral meaning of beauty.

In the movie Babbett’s Feast, based on the story by Isak Dinesen, a woman refugee is taken in by two devout sisters who care for a small religious group in a remote Danish village. In exchange for room and board, she offers to keep house and cook. Soon after, she’s notified of a winning lottery ticket. She offers to create a dinner for the anniversary of their father’s death before she leaves them. The sisters agree, but then fear that their own and the community’s righteousness will be undermined by the luxury of the feast. The meal is a banquet of sumptuous tastes and smells. Afterwards the sisters talk with Babette about her return home. She tells them that she will be staying on as a housekeeper because she has spent all her lottery winnings on the meal, her extravagant outpouring of love.

Like a meal once it is consumed, fragrance is ephemeral. The scent of the nard filled the room and gradually faded. But it doesn’t take much imagination to realize that Jesus would retain this scent, this fragrance throughout the remaining two days of his life. She did anoint him for his death and burial as he said, a last act of love and human kindness while, outside in the night, his own Judas went to the chief priests, receiving an extravagant sum for his action of betrayal.

In the face of the forces of death and destruction that are gathering around Jesus, this woman offers beauty and love. It seemed like a waste to the onlookers. If we were reading this all in one sweep and could hold the imagery of her actions, we would see and smell the anointing of Jesus as king hours before he is crowned by Pilate’s soldiers with thorns and draped with a purple cloak. It is a complex, confusing, emotional image of the one we call Christ, the son of God.

Jesus said whenever the story is told, she will be remembered. But somehow the church missed that message. We repeat this story in every communion liturgy – in the night in which he was betrayed… I’ve added her into the book of liturgy where she should be – in the night in which he was both anointed and betrayed…

This story within a story is important for our lives outside of liturgy and scripture. Beauty and love are powers that transform and transcend. They aren’t practical, economic, militaristic. Beauty and love are as hard to pin down as a fragrance, but they are what matters, ultimately. Not our stuff. Not our edifices. Not our power or strength or wealth. There is a ‘last shall be first, least shall be greatest’ economy to love and beauty. Hope grows from kindness in a cruel world, from beauty against a backdrop of brutality. 

We can see that played out in Ukraine with music. There have been violins playing in bomb shelters, choruses of the national anthem sung in the streets. An Italian, Davide Martello, has been playing piano for refugees arriving in Poland, wanting to give them something beautiful as they leave the violence behind.

Denys Karachevtsev is the cellist on the bulletin cover. A citizen of Kharkiv, he plays in the ruins to give hope. “I love my heroic city which is now struggling to survive the war. I deeply believe that we can help.” He is doing what he can do. Bach’s cello suites are not ammunition, but they may have power.

Sometimes it feels like we are too embedded in anger and exploitation and self-interest, too far along the path of self-destruction to turn back. We don’t need more powerful weapons or better arguments, maybe what we need is more imagination, more acts of extravagance, more devious beauty.

What is it that you can do? In your hands you hold a vessel. Close your eyes and imagine it, feel its weight, its composition. Is it warm or cool? Heavy or light?  Your vessel is full.  Inside it is your extravagant gift, unique to you. What senses does it activate – sound, touch, scent?  It is precious… a treasure that is yours to give.  Can you name it?  Sense it?  Where would you use it or share it or give it?  What lies in your power?  What is it you can do?

Pastor Linda

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Mark 11

When they were approaching Jerusalem, at Bethphage and Bethany, near the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples ²and said to them, ‘Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately as you enter it, you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden; untie it and bring it. ³If anyone says to you,“Why are you doing this?” just say this, “The Lord needs it and will send it back here immediately.” ’ ⁴They went away and found a colt tied near a door, outside in the street. As they were untying it, ⁵some of the bystanders said to them, ‘What are you doing, untying the colt?’ ⁶They told them what Jesus had said; and they allowed them to take it. ⁷Then they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks on it; and he sat on it. ⁸Many people spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut in the fields. ⁹Then those who went ahead and those who followed were shouting, ’Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!
    Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David! Hosanna in the highest heaven!’

11 Then he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple; and when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve.

12 On the following day, when they came from Bethany, he was hungry. ¹³Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to see whether perhaps he would find anything on it. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs. ¹⁴He said to it, ‘May no one ever eat fruit from you again.’ And his disciples heard it.

15 Then they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling and those who were buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold doves; ¹⁶and he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. 

¹⁷He was teaching and saying, ‘Is it not written, “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations”?
   But you have made it a den of robbers.’
¹⁸And when the chief priests and the scribes heard it, they kept looking for a way to kill him; for they were afraid of him, because the whole crowd was spellbound by his teaching. ¹⁹And when evening came, Jesus and his disciples went out of the city.

20 In the morning as they passed by, they saw the fig tree withered away to its roots. ²¹Then Peter remembered and said to him, ‘Rabbi, look! The fig tree that you cursed has withered.’ 

²²Jesus answered them, ‘Have faith in God. ²³Truly I tell you, if you say to this mountain, “Be taken up and thrown into the sea”, and if you do not doubt in your heart, but believe that what you say will come to pass, it will be done for you. ²⁴So I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.

25 ‘Whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone; so that your Father in heaven may also forgive you your trespasses.’

Things are not what they seem.

Jesus rides a colt into Jerusalem, exalted by crowds who sing straight from scriptures’ promise for a king, enacting the prophesy of Zechariah. They wave their branches and have a grand procession, but Jesus’ way, although strewn with palms, does not lead to a throne: It leads to a cross.

Cheered on by the crowd that lines the road, the procession enters Jerusalem, and Jesus goes straight on to the temple as we would expect him to do…. but he goes in, looks around at everything, and, seeing that it’s late, he leaves. He leaves the temple, leaves Jerusalem and goes a few miles away to Bethany for the night.

That’s odd. It’s so anticlimactic. I mean, the stage has been set with the colt and the crowds. He’s never ridden anywhere in their travels – this was a celebration, an event….and it just fizzled.  I guess the colt was taken back to its manger. I suppose the crowds lost interest when he got to the temple? Went home to make supper? Why did Mark include this, it doesn’t seem to fit. 

That’s because nothing fits our expectations. The adoring crowd is not what they seem to be. The next time we see them waving branches, they will be in garden of Gethsemane waving sticks and clubs while Jesus is arrested. The next time we hear them cry out, they will be calling for his death. 

From now until the end, Jesus, who has, it seems, been constantly on the road, on foot and on the way for three years, stays between Bethany and Jerusalem, knowing that staying will be his death. 

The next morning they head back to Jerusalem and we get this marvelous little story of the fig tree. Mark’s gospel gives us the most human characterization of Jesus. He was hungry. He sees a fig tree in full leaf – and, although he knows it’s not the season for figs, goes over to see if it has any fruit. And it doesn’t, so he curses it and moves on. When we see the fig tree again, it has withered and died. 

Matthew’s gospel has smoothed things out. The triumphant entry into Jerusalem ends at the temple where Jesus drives out those buying and selling and overturns the moneychangers tables. After that they go to Bethany for the night and in the morning, on their way back to town, the fig tree story is told, but it withers immediately in their sight.

Mark’s telling might seem inelegant and out of order, but things are not as they appear.

When Jesus comes into the temple this second time, he enters the Court of Gentiles and it’s full of the commerce of the temple system. Booths of doves for sale, grain and oil, lambs and kid goats all to be sold for offerings – much more convenient than traveling with a pair of turtledoves or an extra jug of oil from Galilee. Roman coins had to be exchanged for the proper temple coins. This was the accepted practice.

So it seems Jesus was really hangry; cursing innocent fruit trees and upsetting all the vendors. What’s up?

Well. What’s up is that Jesus found the temple to be as barren as the fig tree. Mark tells one story within another to emphasize the point. Just as the fig-less fig tree withers after not living into its nature, so the temple was not performing its purpose. The Court of Gentiles was to be full of worshiping Gentiles, not commerce. In Mark, Jesus doesn’t purify or cleanse the temple making it fit for sacrifice, he upends temple practice making room for its proper functioning: to be ‘a house of prayer for all nations’, as it says in Isaiah. They weren’t praying, they were braying, they were hawking their wares. Gentiles were allowed only in the large outer court. They could bring or buy a sacrifice or exchange their coins, which would then be taken by priests through the gates into the Women’s Court, through another gate to the Israelite (men’s) Court, through the Court of Priests and finally to the sanctuary and altar. Worshippers were excluded from God’s presence categorically by perceived righteousness. 

This is not the way of Jesus. God’s agency through Jesus was to bring God near, to make God known. Jesus teaches his followers not to rely on a sacred space for their prayers, but that through praying and practicing mutual care and forgiveness their gathering place, wherever it is, will be sacred. 

The procession into Jerusalem that doesn’t seem to have followed to the temple wasn’t an oversight in Mark’s storytelling. It shows the separation of the people from worship. The fig tree wasn’t a whimsical inclusion, it implicates the temple leadership and their practices that had ceased to bear fruit. Messing up the Court of Gentiles’ commerce wasn’t done because Jesus wanted the temple to be more holy, it was done because the very people who needed connection to the God of mercy and life were being excluded. Faith is not transactional. God does not want burnt offerings and sacrifices, but an open and contrite heart. From the sacred place within each human soul, prayer and praise have power to transcend and transform. A temple, a church, an institution can easily get in the way, can get so accustomed to custom that it loses sight of what is living, what is needed, what is re-forming in the Spirit’s way.

Are we what we appear to be? Or rather, what do we appear to be – as individuals, as a community of faith, as Christians? Are you a pilgrim, prophet or priest? We are all servants to something – what cause or need do you serve? If you imagine looking back with the eyes of your future self, will you be content, satisfied, with what you’ve done with what you were given?  You may not feel you have faith to move mountains, but is your faith enough to sustain you through times of trouble? Is it enough to guide you in decisions? Does it provide you with comfort and challenge? Are you able to pray, believing that you have already received, forgiving as you have already been forgiven? What more can you do with this one, beautifully imperfect life?

Audio Recording

Mark 10:17-52

On Wednesday we heard of a man who ran up and knelt before Jesus asking him, ‘Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ Jesus referred him to the commandments: “You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; You shall not defraud; Honor your father and mother.” ’  The man said, ‘Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth.’ And Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, ‘You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.’ But when he heard this, the fellow was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.

Jesus then tells his disciples, ‘How hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! ²⁵It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.’ ²⁶They were greatly astounded and said to one another, ‘Then who can be saved?’ ²⁷Jesus said, ‘For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.’

28 Peter began to say to him, ‘Look, we have left everything and followed you.’ ²⁹Jesus said, ‘Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the good news, ³⁰who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age—houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields, with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life. ³¹But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.’ 

32 They were on the road, going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking ahead of them; they were amazed, and those who followed were afraid. He took the twelve aside again and began to tell them what was to happen to him, ³³saying, ‘See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death; then they will hand him over to the Gentiles; ³⁴they will mock him, and spit upon him, and flog him, and kill him; and after three days he will rise again.’

35 James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came forward to him and said to him, ‘Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.’ ³⁶And he said to them, ‘What is it you want me to do for you?’ ³⁷And they said to him, ‘Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.’ ³⁸But Jesus said to them, ‘You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?’ ³⁹They replied, ‘We are able.’ Then Jesus said to them, ‘The cup that I drink you will drink; and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized; ⁴⁰but to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared.’

41 When the ten heard this, they began to be angry with James and John. ⁴²So Jesus called them and said to them, ‘You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. ⁴³But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, ⁴⁴and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. ⁴⁵For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.’ 

Jesus has turned the corner and is heading to Jerusalem and toward the cross. He is with his disciples, but he is way out ahead of them. Jesus knows what he is heading for, understands the implications of his actions, and they are in denial, (as we would say). In the gospel of John, Jesus says, “I go to prepare a place for you, so that where I am there you may be also.” We hear that mostly at funerals when we’re likely to have heavenly mansions in mind, but as he implies here, he is also referring to the way of suffering. He goes to prepare a place in the midst of injustice and trial and death. It’s a hard word.

Some of those who follow him are amazed at what he says; others are afraid. We can only imagine what they must be thinking and feeling as they work to understand his words, the death that Jesus is leading them toward. To be handed over? Passively? To deny one’s self?  What does that mean? To deny what about oneself, or for oneself? And to what purpose? To put others first out of kindness, mercy, to forgive first… yes, but to risk suffering rather than seek security? Why do that?  They’ve heard it before – but it doesn’t get any more reasonable with repetition.

Jesus continues to explain the nature of his upside down kingdom as a way of being where power is demonstrated through service, greatness is shown in vulnerability, achievement comes through compassion.

Can you imagine, for just a moment, what the world would be like if our leaders behaved like this – vying with each other to see who could best serve the needs of the vulnerable? Outdoing one another in service to the children of the future?

And what if we lived like this – measuring our wealth not in terms of possessions or our “net worth”, but rather in terms of behavior – a wealth of compassion, wealth of self-giving? It’s not that unusual among those who have little, but for those with wealth, it’s another world.

Jesus says he gives his life as ransom – the payment necessary to buy a slave back into freedom.

He has shown us that in God’s kingdom money is a means to help others, that greatness comes through service, and that those who are most deserving of God’s grace are those who are in most need. The last being first.

And it is for the sake of this kingdom, this world order (or disorder) that he will give himself. 

Mark’s Gospel emphasizes that Jesus’ rejection and death are inevitable and required because of who he is, because of the boundary-breaking nature of his ministry, because those who wield power in the world will do anything necessary to protect themselves and their prerogatives from that radical equalization or reversal of privilege.

Giving his life as ransom also means that his death will be more than just a martyr’s protest against an unjust system. The word indicates that his death does something; it provides release, like the scapegoat sent out into the wilderness.

So, through Jesus’ death we are saved – in Mark’s gospel’s understanding – not cosmically from our personal sin, but with implications for how we live in the world; we’re saved from the power of human sin, by the spirit of God giving us the power to act against our self-interest for the sake of others. I think. It’s very hard for us to hear/read the gospels without the overlay of hundreds and hundreds of years of patriarchy and dominant culture. We have been taught that the kingdom of God is for later, some other dimension that we aspire to, or look forward to, that will be puffy clouds and sunny days. That will be Norm walking into Cheers.

But that wasn’t the reality of the gospels. There would be no reason for Jesus to die for that. His teaching had real world, here and now implications for how followers of his way are to live in this world for the sake of others.

Jesus corrects James and John’s vision of glory by holding up the example of Roman rule. Those leaders overpower and tyrannize others. They rely on coercion and control to maintain their dominance and lifestyles and privileges. We’ve seen what happened to John the Baptist when he crossed Herodias. Herod had to save face for a rash, drunken boast he made. His self-interest and self-protection trumped any justice or the value of a man’s life. Jesus’ trial will echo that same strong-armed political theater.

Jesus’ teaching and death delivers us, by example, from the social and political power that human self-interest and ego and hubris devises to control others. And, according to the wider sweep of Mark’s Gospel, it delivers us from demonic powers that enslave the world and resist God’s purposes. In the  resurrection, God defeats the power of death itself.

I asked earlier if we could imagine our leaders acting this way. We have a remarkable example in the news. Russia’s president Putin is a perfect specimen of leadership among the powers and principalities in opposition to a life of service, compassion, humility and justice. At least in the ways this war is portrayed in our news, his ego alone is responsible for the death of thousands of his own governed people, as well as the innocent lives of those in Ukraine. He’s perhaps gotten caught by his bravado, but, for fear of losing face, will not back down, putting nuclear power plants and weapons on the table that will ruin is own lands in the process of whatever victory he may claim. Turning back is not an option once he’s gone this far.

On the other hand, Ukraine president Zelenskyy refused a ride to safety and instead took his place among the soldiers and common people and grandmothers defending their country, ready to give his life as a ransom against Putin’s tyranny.

I want to read parts of his inauguration speech from May 20, 2019. Remember that they have been in an ongoing war with Russia over sections of Ukraine.

“Starting today, every one of us bears responsibility for Ukraine, which we will leave to our children. Each of us, in our own places, can do something for the development of Ukraine. This is our shared dream. But we have shared pains, too. Each of us has died in the Donbas. Every day we lose one of us. And each of us is internally displaced; those who lost their own homes and those who, in turn, opened the doors of their homes, are sharing this pain.

And each of us is a migrant worker. Those who didn’t manage to find their place at home but found earnings in a foreign country. Those who, fighting poverty, had to lose their dignity.

But we will overcome all of this, for each one of us is a Ukrainian. And today I address all the Ukrainians in the world. There are 65 million of us who have the Ukrainian roots. I address every Ukrainian on the planet. We need you very much!

You should come to Ukraine as if you are coming home — not visiting as a guest. We are waiting for you. Don’t bring souvenirs from abroad, bring us your knowledge, experience, and values. All of this will help us start a new epoch.

Skeptics will say, “It’s a fantasy. It’s impossible.” But maybe this is just our national idea: to unite and do something that’s impossible, in spite of everything. …

I was asked very often what exactly I am ready to do to stop the war. It’s a strange question. What are you ready to do, Ukrainians, for the lives of your relatives? What?

I assure you, for our heroes to stop dying, I am ready to do everything. I am certainly not afraid of difficult decisions, I am ready to lose my popularity, my ratings, and — if need be — I am ready to lose this post without hesitation in order to bring peace.

(How many of our leaders would be willing to lose their post for the sake of anything?)

I don’t understand our government, which is just throwing up its hands, saying, “We can do nothing.” It’s not true, you can. You can take a sheet of paper, a pen, and free up places for those who think about the next generations — not just about the next parliamentary election.

   I think that people will appreciate that.

My election proves: people are tired of experienced, systemic, inflated politicians, who for 28 years have created a country of opportunities… opportunities for kickbacks, money flows, corruption. 

   We will build a country of other opportunities, where everyone is equal before the law, where there’s a level playing field. But before that, people who will serve the nation should come to power.

I would very much like for you to not have my portrait in your offices. No portraits! A president is not an icon, nor an idol. A president is not a portrait. Put photographs of your children there, instead. And before making any decision, look them in the eyes.

Dear nation, all my life, I did all I could to make Ukrainians smile. I felt that it wasn’t just my job, it was my mission. In the next five years, I will be doing everything, Ukrainians, for you not to cry.”

Servant leadership? It sounds like it. Another point that seems important; President Zelenskyy is Jewish. Servant leadership is not a Christian category. It is the way of the kingdom of God and can be seen in whoever lives the values of divine mercy and compassion. Baptism into Christ doesn’t give us special status, if anything, it gives us fewer excuses.

Holy One, let us perceive the impossible possibility that you love us, have saved and restored us, and invite now us to be a follower of your blessed and difficult way.    Amen

Audio Recording

 MARK 10 :17-27

As he was setting out on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before Jesus, and asked him, ‘Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ Jesus said to him, ‘Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments: “You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; You shall not defraud; Honor your father and mother.” ’ 

He said to him, ‘Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth.’ Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, ‘You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.’ When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.

Then Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, ‘How hard it will be for those who trust in wealth to enter the kingdom of God!’ And the disciples were perplexed at these words. But Jesus said to them again, ‘Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.’ They were greatly astounded and said to one another, ‘Then who can be saved?’ Jesus looked at them and said, ‘For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.’

Welcome to Lent! 

Not only are we dust and ashes and soon enough to return to our beginnings, but the inability to let go of our accumulated trappings will be our demise. Thanks be to God.

Actually, this seems about right. This has been a particularly difficult week to be a human. Putin’s forces attacking Ukraine brings the superpowers and Europe to edge of our seats. A new climate report places the natural world further along the timeline than was expected. Cascading effects of war, economics and climate put all of our lifestyles, our expected comforts, and our notions of freedom and future under a transfiguring light. What will it take to survive? What must we let go of if we are to survive? What will be the collective will for the sake of the world?

I believe Jesus speaks here knowing the truth – describing the truth – not prescribing a plan of action. 

He tells the young man what he has been telling the Pharisees. You must go beyond strict observance of the Law. You must connect to the values beneath the law that undergird the law. You must get to compassion and open-heartedness, truly seeing yourself, your fate, your future, your own value in the face of that other one, that other face that we do not recognize or know.  The value of your life is no greater than that of the homeless, hungry outside your door. If our perspective extends only to what is personally satisfying and fulfilling, and does not encompass the needs and rights of others outside our gates, then we are not living within the kingdom of God.

This is a hard word, and yet we know it to be true – maybe more so now than at any other time in recent history.

Paul wrote in his letter to the early church in Rome, “We do not live to ourselves, and and we do not die to ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.” These were words of comfort, bracing words, for people facing persecution for their faith in Christ, for proclaiming a kingdom other than Caesar’s, for throwing their allegiance to a reign of equality where the hierarchy of male and female, free or slave no longer holds, but where we willingly serve one another out of respect and recognition.

Tonight’s word’s, “remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return,” seem to me to be saying the same thing to us. We belong to God AND we are of this earth. The life we have, we live here on this earth where Jesus was born and lived and died, inaugurating a new age in the ongoing kingdom of God. The Spirit of God has come to stay – in the way that the wind stays – that is to say, here and there, always somewhere specific and always moving on.

This spirit is what inspires our faith, fills ordinary lives with courage and hope and the drive to care deeply, passionately about improving life in unique and individual and collective ways. We might not feel it in our own selves, but can see that ecstatic spirit living out of others and be inspired by them, like ripples in a pond.  

Dust to dust reminds us who we are – earthlings animated by the breath of God.

Dust and ashes also come as a reminder of the ways that humans across history have destroyed one another, of how we have, with unholy finesse, reduced one another’s homes, cities, histories, habitats and bodies to ash.

This day grounds us, makes us mindful, again, of the humus, humility, the earthiness of which we are made and of the God who brings life from ashes, “who works wonders amid destruction, who cries out and grieves in the presence of devastation and terror, and who breathes God’s own spirit into the rubble. It is this God who breathes into us, calling our awful and glorious ash-strewn selves to speak words of life and freedom and healing amid violence and pain.” *

“On this day of ashes, we do well to remember that we are capable of inflicting pain and destruction. Yet this day reminds us, too, that God knows what to do with dust and ashes, knows what can come from them. As we cross into the season of Lent, how will we give our ashy selves to the God who longs to breathe new life into us and into the world? Where is God calling us to be a presence of healing amid devastation? How is God challenging us to stand against the forces that deny freedom, that seek the silence and captivity of others?” *  And in the enormity of the challenges that face us, how can we find a hopeful way forward?                            * Upon the Ashes, from the Painted Prayerbook, by Jan Richardson

The theme for the weeks of Lent is ‘Good is Enough, embracing a life of imperfection.’  This might sound like giving up. Like it’s all too hard and too big, so let’s settle for Good Enough. That’s not what it’s about.

Good is Enough is realistic. Good is Enough is acknowledging our starting point every day and realizing that change is possible and potential – and we’re not there yet. Good is Enough is admitting that a gap exists between where we are and what’s needed, but it is not conceding the struggle it will take to get there. God looked at all she had made and said, “It is good. Indeed, it is very good,” and God rested. We do not need to be superlative, exceptional, noteworthy, our best selves unto the fray – at least not every day. We need to be engaged. We need to recognize our abilities and gifts – and our disabilities and flaws. Good is Enough when perfection keeps us from trying and when failure isn’t an option. 

Each week will have a theme, a scripture reading, a devotion or two from Kate Bowler’s book, Good Enough, 40ish devotionals for a life of imperfection …… and room for reflections from you.        

Blessing the Dust – A Blessing for Ash Wednesday ~by poet, Jan Richardson, from Circle of Grace

All those days you felt like dust, like dirt, as if all you had to do was turn your face toward the wind and be scattered to the four corners —  or swept away by the smallest breath as insubstantial – did you not know what the Holy One can do with dust?

This is the day we freely say we are scorched. This is the hour we are marked  by what has made it through the burning. This is the moment we ask for the blessing that lives within the ancient ashes, that makes its home inside the soil of this sacred earth.

So let us be marked not for sorrow. And let us be marked not for shame. Let us be marked
not for false humility or for thinking we are less than we are…

but for claiming what God can do within the dust, within the dirt, within the stuff of which the world is made and the stars that blaze in our bones and the galaxies that spiral inside the smudge we bear.