Monday, September 27, 2021

Stumbling

Stumbling

Mark 9:38-50[1]

I wasn’t much of an athlete when I was growing up. I tried playing football, basketball, and baseball, but I just wasn’t very good at any of them. My problem was that I had two “left feet” and I was “all thumbs.” I wasn’t fast, and I didn’t have much in the way of ball-handling skills. So I didn’t even make the basketball team, I didn’t try out for baseball, and in football they stuck me on the line. On the other hand, I was in the marching band, and I did play the trombone, both of which require a level of coordination. And I loved riding my bicycle even then. But in most of the sports that were available, I seemed to be constantly stumbling.

The truth of the matter is that we all stumble through life in many ways that we’d rather not admit. As much as we’d like to be able to present to the world an image of someone who “has it all together,” that’s not really the truth about any of us! We all fall short of the “perfection” we’d like to be able to achieve. We all have times in our lives when, despite our best efforts, we stumble. There have been times in my life when it seemed like all I could do was stumble! I would say that what’s important is not whether we stumble, but what we do when we stumble. Picking ourselves up and starting again can be difficult, but that’s how we learn and grow.

Our gospel lesson for today presents us with some potential “stumbling blocks.” Part of the problem is that we who try to take the Bible seriously can find it difficult to handle it when the Bible uses metaphors, analogies, parables, and other figures of speech. It’s especially difficult for us because we are working with words on a page. We can’t see the expression on Jesus’ face to help us understand when he’s using a figure of speech. We use them all the time, and our language would be much the poorer if we didn’t! But because we are used to our cultural metaphors, we understand them. It’s much more difficult when we’re dealing with the metaphors from a very different time and place.

So, for instance, there have been some who believe that Jesus meant it literally when he said that it’s better to cut off your foot or your hand or tear out your eye than to stumble into sin. But most of us recognize that Jesus didn’t mean it that way. A one-handed person can still be a thief. As we saw a few weeks ago, sin is something that comes from the heart, not from any particular body part. John Calvin observed that Jesus was using “an exaggerated form of speech” to make the point that we should make every effort to avoid sin.[2] We might wonder whether Jesus would actually “exaggerate” like this. But if we do it, why shouldn’t he? The challenge for us is to figure it out. I think the Bible can help us if we will pay close attention.

Another difficulty this passage presents us has to do with Jesus’ warning about stumbling. He begins with the image of being drowned in the sea with a huge stone around your neck (Mk 9:42). I think in this case it’s pretty obvious that Jesus is describing a fate that one would do anything to avoid. But we can get confused when he talks about going to “hell,” “to the unquenchable fire” (Mk 9:43). The word in the original is actually “Gehenna.” It was a familiar term in that day that referred to a valley near Jerusalem that was a burning trash dump filled with decaying bodies and rotting garbage. So I think we should not be surprised that Jesus would use an image that people of his day would find shocking as a warning against causing others to stumble or stumbling ourselves.[3] Jesus wasn’t speaking literally about the afterlife, he was painting a word picture to make a point: do everything you can to avoid this!

Another way to avoid stumbling here is to pay attention to what Jesus is getting at. His point is that, just as we would make every effort to avoid either of the “fates” he describes, so we should do everything possible to avoid either causing someone else to stumble, or stumbling ourselves. In the first place, he’s talking about the effects of his disciples’ thoughts of “greatness” on believers who might be vulnerable to stumbling in their faith. But Jesus also urged his disciples to beware of all possible temptations to stumble themselves. In both cases, I think Jesus made such a big deal about it because when we cause another to stumble we diminish them, and when we stumble we diminish ourselves. That’s something Jesus wants us to make every effort to avoid.

When I was younger, thoughts of practicing yoga as a “sport” were the furthest thing from my mind! Even though I’ve practiced yoga for ten years, I still “stumble” with some of the balance poses we do. The fact is that I still stumble in life as well, even though I’ve been working at this Christian thing for over 45 years! While Jesus uses strong language to warn us against stumbling, I don’t think he was demanding perfection. I think he was trying to impress upon us how important it is to avoid diminishing ourselves or someone else by our actions. We all stumble at times, but thankfully, as the Psalmist says, “though we stumble, we shall not fall headlong, for the Lord holds us by the hand” (Ps. 37:24).



[1] © 2021 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm, Ph. D. on 9/26/2021 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] John Calvin, Commentary on a Harmony of the Evangelists Matthew, Mark, and Luke, vol. 1, p. 291.

[3] Cf. Calvin, Commentary on a Harmony, 285-86.

Tuesday, September 21, 2021

The Least of the Least

 The Least of the Least

Mark 9:30-37[1]

In our world, we celebrate “the best of the best.” And it’s a good thing to recognize the commitment, dedication, and diligence that goes into seeking to do something well. But since not everyone can be “the best of the best,” the rest of us may find ourselves wondering where we fall in the “food chain” of society. I think even young children among us can grasp that to some degree “losing” is really not “okay.” So it is that many of may spend our lives trying be the “best” at something. Life, however, has a way of taking us on journeys that we don’t expect. Even when we work hard, apply ourselves with dedication, and make sacrifices, we all sometimes find ourselves on the “losing” end.

I would say that the fact of the matter is that there are a lot of people in this world who are dealing with loss of one kind or another. Many are dealing with multiple losses at once. The irony of life is that those who have lost the most usually have the most to teach the rest of us about how to live. They approach life with serenity, contentment, gratitude, and even generosity. When it comes to knowing how to really live, the “least of the least” tend to do it far better than the “best of the best.” Perhaps that should make us all stop and think about how we measure what is “best” in life!

Our Gospel lesson for today brings together several episodes related to this theme. It begins with Jesus, whom Peter has already confessed to be the Messiah, telling the disciples again that he is going to be killed. As I’ve mentioned before, in their minds, Messiahs don’t get killed; they conquer and liberate their people from their oppressors. Messiahs usher in the Kingdom of God on earth. The idea of a Messiah being killed simply made no sense to them. I think when the Scripture says, the disciples “did not understand what he was saying” (Mk. 9:32), it may be an understatement!

It’s almost surprising that, right after Jesus gives the disciples this shocking news a second time, they began to argue about “who was the greatest” (Mk. 9:34). Mark doesn’t specify the greatest at what. He simply says they were arguing about who was the greatest. Set alongside Jesus’ prediction of his impending death, that in and of itself seems out of place. Matthew’s Gospel brings the problem into sharper focus: there they asked Jesus outright, “Who is the greatest in the Kingdom of God?” (Matt. 18:1). It seems they were dreaming of having the places of honor when Jesus ushered in the “kingdom” they were expecting.

Jesus’ answer to them makes it clear that they had missed one of the most important lessons he tried to teach them: “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all” (Mark 9:35). And to emphasize the point, Jesus seeks to correct his disciples’ misguided ambition by embracing a child. He says to them, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me” (Mark 9:37). We tend to view that as something “tender,” because that’s the way we see children. As I’ve mentioned before, that wasn’t always the way children were treated in that day. In many cases they were simply mouths to feed and hands to be put to work as soon as possible. Many children were the “least of the least” of all in that day.

But Jesus not only said to embrace the children, he also told his disciples they had to become like children in order to enter the Kingdom of God (Mk 10:13-16). Again, we take a “sentimental” approach to this by thinking he’s talking about the trusting nature of a child. But I think the disciples would not have found the idea of becoming like a child very inviting. A child was someone you could treat however you wanted, and nobody would be the wiser. Many children were among the most vulnerable, the weakest, the lowest, and the last of all. They were among the “least of the least.”

Jesus told his disciples that following him meant serving others, not seeking greatness. And just in case they didn’t get the practical implications, he took a child and said that the way they treated that child was the measure for their service. I think this is Mark’s version of Matthew 25: “as you did it to the least of these you did it to me” (Mt 25:40). The true test of one’s character is how you treat those who cannot “report” you to anyone. But service in the kingdom of God not only means caring for the “least of the least,” it also means taking our place among them. I’d say that’s no more welcome to us than it was to Jesus’ disciples.

It goes against the grain; it’s about as contrary to our way of life as you can get. But while we spend our efforts seeking to be “the best of the best,” Jesus calls us to give up those ambitions and devote our lives to serving others. I think there’s still room in that call for us to do what we do with commitment, dedication, and diligence. One of our ordination vows calls those who would serve the church to do so with “energy, intelligence, imagination, and love.” As I mentioned last week, Jesus demands the best we have to give. But we must offer our best in full recognition that Jesus also calls us to a path that leads us not only to care for those who are most vulnerable in society. It also leads us to take our place alongside the “least of the least.” It’s a path of “downward mobility,” if you will. The path Jesus calls us to walk is one that takes us to places where we offer the best we have to give not for our own enrichment but for the benefit of others, especially the “least of the least.”



[1] © 2021 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm, Ph. D. on 9/19/2019 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

Sunday, September 12, 2021

The Gift is Free, but It's Not Cheap

 The Gift is Free, But Not Cheap

Mark 8:27-38[1]

I think we all come to faith with assumptions about what it means to be a Christian. We may think it relates primarily to how we participate in church or our hope for eternal life. In my case, phrases like “abundant life” and “new life in Christ” appealed to my dreams for a happy home for my children. But our faith challenges us to think more deeply than our dreams about “the good life.” To put it bluntly, our faith means we have chosen to follow a man who was executed as a criminal, accused of insurrection. More than that, our faith challenges us to think about what it means to even call ourselves “Christian.” What should we expect of our lives if we dare to call ourselves by the name of a Christ who died a shameful death on the cross?[2] If we let that sink in, I think we have to admit that while the gift of new life in Christ is free, it’s not cheap!

We believe that God gives us the gift of his love freely, unconditionally, and irrevocably. It’s easy to take that gift for granted, thinking since God will love me no matter what, it doesn’t matter what I do. But the truth is that the gift of love did not come “cheaply” for God, it was quite costly. And that means that we cannot take it for granted. We have to consider what God’s costly gift in Jesus Christ means for us if we call ourselves “Christian.” If we say we’re going to follow a Christ who died on the cross, we have recognize that decision will be costly to us as well. And the cost is that we cannot simply live our lives however we please.

As we have seen before, that is the point of our Gospel lesson for today. Peter confessed that Jesus is the “Messiah,” but when Jesus began to teach them that meant he would have to die, it became obvious that Peter didn’t understand at all. Jesus knew that his path of obedience to God would lead him to die on a cross. In fact, he says that he “must” face rejection, great suffering, and ultimately death in order to carry out his role as the “Messiah.” The necessity behind this was that it was the only way for him to carry out God’s plan to offer unfailing love to all of us as a free gift. But that gift comes to us at great cost to God: it comes at the cost of Jesus’ life!

If that weren’t shocking enough, Jesus proceeded to teach his disciples that their obedience to God would lead them on the same path! He told them point blank: “those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it” (Mk 8:35). We know from history that some of the early Christians literally faced death for the sake of their faith in Jesus. While we don’t face death for our faith, we still have to figure out what it means for us to “lose” our lives for Jesus’ sake.

One who actually followed Jesus to the point of death was Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He was teaching theology at the University of Berlin when the Nazis took control of Germany in 1933. At great personal risk, he led a movement of Christians who resisted the idolatry of the Nazi movement. That movement produced the “Barmen Declaration” that is in our book of Confessions today, and reminds us that Jesus represents “God’s mighty claim upon our whole life” and our “joyful deliverance from the godless fetters of this world.[3] When war was imminent, Bonhoeffer initially fled to the safety of New York, but he almost immediately returned to Germany to continue leading the underground church and resisting the Nazis. He was imprisoned in Berlin in 1943 and executed along with other resistance leaders on April 9, 1945.

In the early years of the Nazi era when he was leading the underground church, Bonhoeffer wrote a book simply entitled “Discipleship.” There, he reflected on the tension between the fact that God’s gracious gift comes to us freely, but it is nevertheless costly. Bonhoeffer challenged what he called “cheap grace,” which for him meant grace as forgiveness that doesn’t change the way we live.[4] Bonhoeffer contrasted that with what he called “costly grace”: “it is costly, because it calls us to discipleship; it is grace, because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly, because it costs people their lives; it is grace, because it thereby makes them live.”[5]

If we choose to accept God’s incredibly generous gift and follow Jesus as his disciples, we cannot simply pursue our own quest for “the good life.” The gift of God’s love demands the very best we have to give, throughout our lives. Jesus not only taught us, he showed us that the way to truly live is to give yourself away for the sake of others. If we refuse that choice because the price of surrendering our hopes and dreams is too high, the consequence is that we will lose the very heart and soul of what it means to really live. But if we have the courage to follow Jesus, we will find that the path of self-giving is the way to the life that God offers each and every one of us. That’s the wonderful gift God offers: it’s free, but it’s not cheap!



[1] © 2021 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm, Ph. D. on 9/12/2021 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God, 36-38: “Christians who do not have the feeling that they must flee the crucified Christ have probably not yet understood him in a sufficiently radical way.”

[3] “The Theological Declaration of Barmen,” The Book of Confessions (2016), 8.14 (p. 283).

[4] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, (Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works 4), 43-44: “Cheap grace means grace as … cut-rate forgiveness; … grace without a price, without costs. … Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross.”

[5] Bonhoeffer, 45.

Wednesday, September 08, 2021

Seeing Others, Seeing Ourselves

Seeing Others, Seeing Ourselves

Mark 7:24-37; James 2:1-17[1]

If you asked people what the marks of genuine faith are, the vast majority would say something about being kind to others. And that would be true the world over, regardless of race or religion. It has been taught world-wide from the beginnings of human religious devotion. Unfortunately, however much we may say that kindness and compassion ought to define our lives, we’ve never quite been able to put that into practice. From the beginning of time, we have drawn lines and built fences to separate “Us” from “Them.” And we’ve done it because have always seen those who are “Other” as a threat to our survival.

The practical truth, however, is that our continued building of barriers and drawing of lines does not enhance our safety. Rather, dividing the world into “Us” and “Them” poses the greatest threat to human survival. We see it locally where communities are tearing themselves apart over everything from public safety to the current health crisis to schooling for our children. We see it globally in the changing weather patterns that are putting people in harm’s way from fire and flooding, from drought and superstorms. “Us” versus “Them” is not only not compassionate, it also undermines the future of humanity, because we can only solve these problems by working together!

With that in mind, we may find it surprising that in our Gospel lesson for today Jesus appears to endorse an “us versus them” mentality in his encounter with a woman who was a “foreigner.” When she heard he was near, she went and begged him to help her daughter. Begged! In response, Jesus said: “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs” (Mk. 7:27). Not only does that sound unkind, it was also downright insulting. It sounds like the typical Jewish mindset that only Jewish people qualified as the “neighbors” God commanded them to love. Everyone else was a Gentile “dog.”

I find it hard to believe that was who Jesus was. As we saw last week, Jesus made it clear being accepted and loved by God is not about washing your hands “properly” or eating the “right” foods. And Jesus also made it clear that how you treat people is the measure for how well you honor God. With that in mind, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that our Gospel lesson for today is about Jesus healing people who would have been considered “unclean” simply because of where they were born. Although it’s not obvious here, Jesus’ interactions elsewhere with all those who would have been considered “Other” shows how wrong-headed it is to draw lines that exclude certain people from God’s love.

I think we have to understand Jesus’ strange comment in light of how he actually treated people who were considered “dogs.” Perhaps he was testing the woman to see if she truly had faith. If so, she passed with flying colors, because she called him “Lord,” and she’s the only person in Mark’s gospel to do so! Perhaps he was testing his disciples to find out whether they understood what it meant to love their neighbors. If so, I’d have to say that, like everything else Jesus tried to teach them, at this point they still didn’t get it. The bottom line is that we can only read this strange comment rightly if we keep in mind that everything Jesus did was about loving God and loving others, especially “outsiders.”

While we all “know” that this is what real faith looks like, our lesson from James may push us a bit on whether we “walk the walk” or only “talk the talk.” I think James is saying that just as we cannot love God without loving others, so we cannot honor God if we dishonor others. And he challenged the churches of his day for dishonoring those who were poor and not so “well-dressed” by being less than “welcoming” when they came for worship. He says it bluntly: “If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,’ and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?” (Jas 2:16).

It would seem that, for James, the true test of our faith is how we love others. And for James, loving your neighbor as yourself cannot be just something we talk about. If it comes from a heart of genuine faith, it will have to move us toward action. So the real question for us is whether we will go beyond talking and actually help people in need. How we do that in practice will be different for all of us, but I think it has to begin with compassion. And real compassion starts with seeing “that every human face is the face of a neighbor.”[2] It starts with seeing ourselves in the face of everyone we label “Other.”

If you read my newsletter column this week, you know that we’re attempting to rise to a new level of meeting that challenge as a church family. We are embarking on a “listening exercise” by reading the stories of people whom we may be tempted to view as “Other.” Our hope is that this will help us learn new ways to love our neighbors, all our neighbors, by going beyond talking about it and doing something to help. Where that begins is recognizing the God-given right “of every person to be considered a person.”[3] It begins with seeing ourselves when we see others.



[1] © 2021 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm, Ph. D. for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] Henri Nouwen, The Wounded Healer, 41.

[3] Paul Tillich, Love, Power and Justice, 25, 36, 60. This is Tillich’s definition of justice, which he argues must flow from love.

Wednesday, September 01, 2021

Honoring God

 Honoring God

Mark 7:1-23[1]

Religion can bring out the best in us and it can bring out the worst in us. It can lead us to have the compassion to care for those who are suffering. More than that, it can lead us to give not only our time but also our dollars to provide what they need. But religion can also bring out the worst in us. In the name of religion, we draw lines that separate “us” from “them,” convinced that “they” are “unworthy.” They don’t deserve God’s love and therefore they don’t deserve even basic respect and kindness from us. People of all faiths inflict all kinds of harm in the conviction that they are doing “God’s will.” I would say that kind of religion has lost its way.

This problem is found not only in “other” religions. Church can bring out the best in us, but it can also bring out the worst in us. Our beliefs about God are closely connected with our beliefs about ourselves. We tend to hold near and dear whatever touches upon how we view ourselves. We can wrap up our whole identity in our personal view of God, of our destiny, and of what’s right and proper. And if anyone dares to suggest that there might be another way to look at these things, we can get pretty bent out of shape. We can take it as a threat to our well-being, to our very identity, and nobody responds very well to that kind of threat.

This is what’s going on in the background of our Gospel lesson for today. While the issue on the surface of things was about washing hands, the real question went deeper. It had nothing to do with hygiene; it was about how to honor God. The Jewish leaders believed that the only way to honor a holy God and live as God’s people was to observe the many rules about avoiding what was called “unclean,” including certain foods and even people that were considered “contaminated.” They believed they could stay “clean” in God’s sight simply by washing their hands! Along with rigidly keeping the rules about what they ate, or the clothes they wore, or who their friends were, washing their hands was how they believed they were obeying the command, “you shall be holy, for I am holy” (Lev 11:45).

This mindset is so different from our way of thinking that it takes some explanation. They believed God’s holiness was so incomparable and so powerful that you could only approach God at certain times and places, and under very carefully prescribed circumstances. That also meant, in their way of thinking, that anyone who didn’t follow those rules would be destroyed if they got “too close” to God. They believed that’s what a “holy” God did—eliminate any trace of contamination from his presence. And so, for them to live as the people of a God like this, keeping themselves “pure” with their rules was not an option, it was a requirement.

Jesus turned their whole world upside down when he said that what you eat, or what you wear, or who you hang out with, or whether you wash your hands cannot make you “unclean,” or unacceptable to God. Jesus taught that truly honoring God is a matter of the heart; it’s about the quality of your character; it concerns how you live your life. At a deeper level, Jesus insisted that true holiness, true faith, truly honoring God is about loving God with all that you are and loving your neighbors as yourself. God’s holiness is not something that destroys what is flawed, but rather God’s holiness works through the love that seeks to restore and heal what is flawed and broken, which includes everyone and everything!

In our lesson for today Jesus lists some of the kinds of actions that dishonor God. These behaviors dishonor God because when we do them we harm ourselves and others. Unfortunately, it’s easy for us to turn a list like that into just another system of judging who is “clean” or “unclean.” But if we look at how Jesus lived, we see that honoring God is not about drawing lines and avoiding people we may judge to be “sinners.” It’s a matter of extending God’s love to all people, especially the most vulnerable.

I must confess that I don’t understand the notion that God is so holy that if anyone gets too close to him when they’re “unworthy,” God will destroy them. That’s not what Jesus taught about God. He taught us that God pours his love into our lives to draw us into relationship with him. Jesus taught us that the way to love God with “all our hearts” is to go out and share God’s love with everyone around us. If we do that, we may “get our hands dirty” because we encounter people labelled as “sinners.” But that’s what Jesus did; he didn’t hesitate to share God’s love even with “sinners,” whom “religious” people believed were unfit for compassion.

Some of us may be wondering how we’re supposed to really do this given our shortcomings. St. Augustine believed that the answer to that question is to “love, and do what you want.”[2] I think he was saying that if we truly love God and truly love others, what we “want” will be an expression of that love toward God and others! What enables us to live like this is that God’s love changes our hearts from within. Of course, that kind of change takes place over time. As we keep seeking to honor God the way Jesus taught us, by loving God and others, this will become something we can’t help doing because our very character has been shaped by God’s love.

 



[1] © 2021 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm, Ph. D. on 8/29/2021 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] Augustine, Ten Homilies on the first Epistle of John, 7.8 (on 1 John 4:4–12); https://ccel.org/s/schaff/npnf107/cache/npnf107.pdf (p.862).