Sermons from Saint John’s

Lectionary Readings

I met a traveller from an antique land,                           (Not me, personally. It’s a poem.)
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

The disciples roll up to the Temple in Jerusalem like the bumpkins that they are, gawking at the sights of the big city. As Jesus walks out of the Temple, having just said something wise about a poor widow who gave away her last two pennies there, one of the disciples says, “Wow! Rabbi! Have you seen how big these stones are? And the buildings! Look! They’re… they’re really big, too!” (Mark 13:1)

You might be surprised at this disciple’s surprise. After all, there were three great festivals a year, on which faithful Jews would travel to Jerusalem to worship at the Temple. Galilee’s not so far away. It would’ve been normal to do what Jesus’ parents did, and to come down, several times a year and for big family events as well, to offer a sacrifice there. This disciple may not be the most pious; maybe he’s stayed home the last few years, and it shows.

But to be fair, the Temple had been under construction for years, refurbished and rebuilt over the course of decades, beginning during the reign of Herod the Great. Over the course of Jesus’ life, the set of buildings around the Temple was transformed. What began as a few buildings around the Temple itself, which stood ten stories high or more, had been built up into a thirty-five acre Temple Mount surrounded by retaining walls; all in all, about a quarter of the size of ancient Jerusalem. Put another way: While the Temple itself was about the size of this church, the walls around the Temple Mount would’ve stretched to the Whole Foods parking lot in one direction, and up to the Monument in the other.

So fair enough. If you saw a building project of this scope grow over the course of your life, maybe all that you could say would be: “What large stones!”

But Jesus only looks at him and says: “Do you see these great buildings?” (13:2) “Well, yeah,” you can imagine the disciple might’ve thought to himself, “Wasn’t I just saying how big they are?” But Jesus isn’t done. “Do you see these big buildings?” he says. “Not one stone will be left here upon another. All will be thrown down.” (Mark 13:2)

Downer. But Jesus was right. Well, particularly pedantic readers of the Bible will sometimes point out that Jesus is actually wrong; that the Western Wall of the Temple Mount still stands to this day, a place of prayer for the Jewish people for two thousand years, ever since the Temple itself Mount was destroyed. But really, this only strengthens the point. Jesus was right: just a few decades after his death, at the end of the failed rebellion against Rome, all had been thrown down but one partial wall. And none of it would ever be rebuilt.

But of course, Rome itself was thrown down soon enough. The Roman Republic had already failed. The old gods would be next, Roman temples replaced as thoroughly as the Temple had been destroyed as new Emperors began to worship the man old Emperors had killed. And then the Empire collapsed, and only the ruins remained of its ancient glory, amid the medieval cities that rose up throughout the West, as nations and kingdoms rose and fell and rose and fell.

Human history, in fact, is an unbroken cycle of things being thrown down and new things being built. Every civilization seems to think that it is the greatest that has ever been, and that the End of History is surely near; and every one declines and falls in turn.

Jesus is right. Sooner or later, “all will be thrown down.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley knew this when he wrote the poem with which I began. Shelley was inspired by tales of ancient Egypt, whose extraordinary culture was only just being rediscovered in the early 19th century when he wrote that poem. “Ozymandias” is a Greek form of the name of Pharaoh Ramesses II, who really was one of the great figures in human history, probably the most powerful person to walk the Earth in 500 years or so.

Shelley envisions a statue worthy of the man, a form that would’ve towered over the crowds with a look of stern command. The pharaohs were worshiped as gods, and Ramesses was one of the greatest of them all. The statue addressed any who might think to challenge his grandeur and his might:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

And as two centuries of English teachers have pointed out, there’s a double meaning here. The statue sends a message to conquered lands and subjugated peoples, “Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” You will never be as powerful as I. But there’s a message for later times, as well. “Look on my works, ye Mighty.” See the ruins of my kingdom, forgotten for centuries after it crumbled into dust. See my “shattered visage,” as it crumbles into sand, next to a couple of legs, without a torso to be found. “Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” Because if this is what remains of my great nation and my great reign—What will remain of you in 3500 years?

I think that there are a couple ways to take this, one bad, one good.

The bad way, I think, is to respond with despair. I’m sorry to say, your life will one day come to an end. This civilization will also decline. This building, into which so much energy and care have been poured for so many generations, will one day be thrown down, and not one stone will be left. So what’s the point? You might ask. It’s all just going to end up buried in the sand.

There’s half an answer in our reading from Daniel today, and it’s the promise that this world is not the end. That when we are forgotten after a hundred or a thousand years, we are remembered still by God. The world may go through anguish, time and time again, but in the end, “many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake… [and] those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky.” (Daniel 12:1–3) The measure of our greatness is not how large our monuments and buildings are. It’s not whether we still inspire fear in the nations of the world. It’s the fact that we still receive God’s love, however great or small, however weak or mighty we are.

But there’s a second half to this good news, as well, and it’s not off in heaven. It’s right here. “Beware that no one leads you astray,” Jesus says. You may “hear of wars and rumors of wars…but the end is still to come.” This is all just “the beginning of the birth pangs.” (Mark 13:8)

I myself have never given birth. But I’m told it’s often worth it, in the end.

Yes, the Temple was cast down. And so was ancient Rome. But something else emerged. And that thing fell, and something else came next. Chaos and catastrophe recur. That’s human life. Everything we build will be destroyed. But that’s not a reason not to build it. That’s exactly why we must build, and rebuild, and rebuild again.

Because those buildings are beautiful and those stones are large. Because those relationships give us life and those communities teach us to love. Because when all our monuments have crumbled into dust, nothing can take away the acts of love we left behind. And even in some of the most anguishing times, something new is being born; in fact, nothing new is born in any other way.

So yes, one day this “all will be thrown down.” Our greatest achievements will collapse into the sand. So will our worst mistakes, for what it’s worth. And yes, one day you all will “shine like stars,” and the glory of that heavenly life will reflect the depth of God’s great love. But it is also true that the things that we build here matter, for as long as they remain. They’re temporary, and transient, but so is everything else. Our past has crumbled away, and our future is still far off, but right here, the things we build together remain, and we live in them—because we can try to remember the past, and we can pray for a better future, but we can start building a beautiful present together, today.

Lectionary Readings

Today’s sermon began with a bit of an extended preamble about prayer in challenging times, followed by a prayer; you can listen to this all in the audio, but there is not a written text. The text of the sermon proper is included below.

I don’t have much to say about the scribes, who like to wear long robes, and have the best seats, who tend—if we’re being honest with ourselves—to say some rather long prayers. I just might risk hypocrisy with that, today.

And I don’t want to say much about the poor widow who comes, and puts her last two coins into the Temple treasury. It’s too easy, on the week before our Stewardship Ingathering, to make this one about giving money to the church; and that’s not really what I want to do today.

But I do want to say something about what to do when you’re at the end of your rope; when you’ve worked as hard as you can, and done everything you can, and it hasn’t worked; and it feels like hope is lost.

Because that’s exactly where Elijah finds this woman who lives at Zarephath, in our first reading today.

It’s worth saying that, throughout the ancient Near East, we have evidence of laws that tried to provide for widows and orphans, that tried to establish some kind of social safety net for those who didn’t have the property, or labor, or the family support to provide for themselves. And it’s not just that this woman and her child have fallen through the cracks; there’s been a drought, and food is scarce, and there simply isn’t enough to go around. She has nothing prepared to offer Elijah. Her pantry is empty, just a cup of flour or so, and a little bit of oil, and there’s nothing else.

We can assume she’s prayed for rain, and so has everyone else. We can assume she’s asked for help, and there just isn’t enough to share. And so here she is, at the end of the line, and her story is deeply sad. Her plan is just to go, and cook what she has left; and then that’s it for them.

And this strange man, this man she doesn’t know, comes to her and says, “Do that; but give me some as well.”

And she does. And that is an extraordinary thing. He’s not her son. He’s not her neighbor. He’s not even her fellow-citizen, because she lives in Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, in Phoenicia; and he’s an Israelite. He’s crossed the border to her, and the only document he has is the word of God telling him to go. And I can tell you, because I have studied these two tongues, that she could understand his words, but she could hear it in his voice that he was not from here. And yet she took a quarter-cup of her last cup of flour, and baked a little bread for him, as well.

And that’s the generosity of desperation, because this is all they have, and then their lives will end; so why not give a little bit away?

And “the jar of meal was not emptied, neither did the jug of oil fail, according to the word of the Lord that he spoke by Elijah.”

Now—Miracles are not a great answer to the concrete problems of the world. Faith alone cannot solve the problems of world hunger, or of drought, problems that have plagued humankind throughout history, however hard they’ve prayed or not. Such concrete miracles are rare. But every day, God works miracles of the heart. And so I don’t exactly want to give you any advice. But I want you to tell how I used my flour this week, and I want to invite you to think, when you find yourself at the end of the line, about how you might use yours.

So like I said, I was up for about half of Tuesday night—which did give me some valuable sermon-writing time, as I lay in bed—and then Wednesday is a day when I’m home with Murray for the day and Alice is at work. And so I got up, on Wednesday, after a couple hours’ sleep, and spent the rest of the day with a child whose sleep had been blissfully undisturbed. We read a chapter of our history book about the Alaric the Goth and the fall of the Roman Empire, and did some single-digit math—this is a humanities family, to be clear—and we went out for a walk on a beautiful, warm day. And at the end of this long and high-energy day, I found that I was not as exhausted as I sometimes am. I was feeling better than I had when I woke up. In fact, I was feeling better than I had the last night when I went to bed.

I had very little left in me on Wednesday morning, and I gave some of it away; and I found that “the jar of meal was not emptied, neither did the jug of oil fail.” And I know exactly why. Not only had I not spent the day entirely in my head, as I had for those sleepless hours at night; but I had spent my day loving someone, in a very concrete way.

I don’t know what it is that has you at the end of your rope today. If it’s not the election, it may well be something else. But I do know that sometimes, when you’re all at of flour, paradoxically it can help to try to give some of it away. Not to give more of yourself away to whatever it is that has you drained. But to spend some of your energy, in a very concrete way, on something else that’s fueled by love.

Because while miracles of bread and oil are rare, miracles of the heart are not, and you just might find a new abundance at the very moment that you give what you have away.

Lectionary Readings

Is anyone here familiar with the work of Belinda Carlisle?

In the 1980s, she wrote some pretty interesting things that touched on what Christian theologians call “eschatology,” the study of the “last things.” Eschatology means thinking about what exactly we mean when we say, in the Nicene Creed, that we look for “the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.” And in many ways Carlisle’s work really resonates with our first two readings today, which are two of my favorite passages in the Bible, these powerful visions Isaiah and John the Divine had of a new heaven and a new earth.

You may think you have no idea who or what I’m talking about right now, but I think it’s very likely that that you have, in fact, heard Belinda Carlisle’s reflection on life in the new Jerusalem. It goes like this: “Ooh, Heaven is a place on Earth!”

That isn’t even really a joke.

“They say in Heaven, love comes first,” she sings. Well, that’s certainly true, theologically speaking. “We’ll make Heaven a place on Earth,” she goes on—which I think is supposed to be, like, a romantic thing, but it actually works really well as a statement of Christian ethics. And then she really gives us a keen theological insight in the bridge: “In this world, we’re just beginning / to understand the miracle of living.” Belinda: That’ll preach.

Now, I don’t know if Belinda Carlisle is a woman of faith. The nature of the music video implies that she might have something more earthy in mind with this metaphor; also, there are a lot of people dancing around with globes. (Never mind.)

But I have to say: If Belinda Carlisle’s “Heaven is a place on earth” is over on one side of a theological spectrum, and the most common ideas of what “heaven” means in our culture are on the other, then you have to admit that the view that you find reflected in the prophecies of Isaiah and of John is a lot closer to Ms. Carlisle’s than you might think.

Both the prophet Isaiah, in the 8th century BC or so, and the seer John the Divine, in the 1st century after Christ, envision “the world to come” not as one in which we leave this world behind and go away to be with God, but one in which God comes down to earth to be with us. Isaiah sees God coming to the people “on this mountain,” on Mount Zion in Jerusalem itself. (25:6) The Lord of hosts will host “a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines.” The good things of this world aren’t left behind, they’re embraced, enriched, and multiplied. But the hard things of this world are wiped away. The shroud cast over us is destroyed, the sheet that’s spread over us is removed; in other words, God swallows up death itself, and wipes away the tears from our eyes. (25:7-8)

In the Book of Revelation, John picks up that same thread. He sees a new heaven and a new earth, a holy city coming down to us from God. John sees God dwelling with us as God’s people, and “wiping every tear from our eyes.” For “See? The home of God is among mortals.” (Rev. 21:3)

That’s very different from the way we tend to think about things in 2024, even in the church. When we think about the life of the world to come, when we reflect on what happens after death, we tend to talk about how someone has gone away to be with God in their eternal home in what is, hopefully, “The Good Place.” But wait! Revelation seems to say. It’s not so much that our true home is out there, somewhere, with God. It’s that God’s true home is here with us. The world to come will be a better place not because we’ve left this world behind, but because this world has been transformed by the presence of a holy and living and loving God.

In other words: “Ooh! Heaven is a place on earth.” And what we think of as heaven, the place where the souls of all the departed rest in the hands of God, is exactly that, a resting place where they wait until the resurrection of the dead, when we will live again with them once more.

Which sounds, to me, even better than all the harps.

I don’t know what’s happening in your soul this All Saints’ Day.

Perhaps you’re here, mourning the loss of someone in your life who’s died, very recently or very long ago. Perhaps one or two of the names in our prayers today, silent or out loud, will make you choke up, and you won’t be able to say the response, because that pain is still there. And I have to admit, that might be the case for me, too. Or maybe hearing one of those names will fill your heart with gratitude for their life, and remind you of their love. Maybe both. And there’s a reason that we pause, together, once a year, to say these prayers.

Perhaps you’re here, rather anxious about the election process that is already simmering along, and will reach full boil on Tuesday, and will not, by the grace of God, boil over when it is decided some time in the next few weeks. Perhaps it’s one outcome or the other that keeps you up at night. Perhaps it’s concern about the safety and stability of the work of American democracy itself. Perhaps it’s the estrangement that our politics have caused in your life, from other people with whom you no longer want to speak. And there’s a reason that we pause, together, not once every four years but every year, to hear these words from long ago about a holy city coming down to us from God.

Perhaps you’re simply enjoying your life in this world; maybe things are good, and you don’t want to think about leaving them behind. Perhaps you love your family and your friends, your work, your life. Perhaps you don’t; maybe things aren’t so good. Maybe your body hurts. Maybe you’re sick, and tired. Maybe there’s or two that you wouldn’t mind having wiped away from your eyes. And—not to repeat myself too much—there’s a reason we pause every year, to remember that the life of the world to come is a life like this one, but with the goodness deepened and the sorrows wiped away.

When God raised Jesus from the dead, we believe, it wasn’t the end of the story of the Resurrection; it was the first glimpse of the life of the world to come. However incredible it is, the Christian hope is that we will one day live again in a world where “death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.” (Rev. 21:4)

And there’s good news there. But there’s also a challenge.

I’ll never forget an afternoon workshop I spent sitting in the undercroft beneath the chapel of the Society of St. John the Evangelist. For those who don’t know, SSJE is an order of Episcopal monks who have a monastery just up the river, right on Mem Drive in Cambridge. It was a workshop on “community,” in all its beauty and complexity. And I think it was Brother Curtis Almquist and Brother David Vryhof, two very dear, kind, loving men who’ve spent a long time living in close quarters with a group of other monks, who—like all human beings—sometimes have rough edges.

So during the Q&A, somebody described a conflict they were having with someone. I can’t remember what it was. But I do remember that Curtis listened to them carefully, and he replied—And this is my Curtis impression—“Mm. Mm. …Mm. God loves you. God loves you so much. God wants to spend eternity with you. And them. Together.”

If you’re missing someone who’s gone, this All Saints’ Day, the good news is that God wants to spend eternity with you, and them, together. And if you’re struggling to understand, this All Saints’ Day, how someone could be voting differently from you, how someone could support someone who’s so clearly the wrong choice for the office of the President, then that’s the challenge: God wants to spend eternity with you, and them, and that candidate for office, together. Surely we can’t really believe that the political beliefs of the people with whom we disagree are enough to separate them from the love of God. And so we’re left with the unpleasant fact that we’re going to have to find a way to live together. And we might as well start practicing now.

And that’s the invitation, here. We can begin to live, even now, as if we are in that holy city to come. We can begin to live, even now, as if our lives are governed by compassion and love. We can participate in the process by which God is making all things new, already, here and now. We can try to draw back the curtain and let the heavenly reality lying behind all things be revealed, because, as it turns out, heaven will one day be “a place on earth.”

Lectionary Readings

A fun fact about me this summer: I had a minimum of one hundred cups of water thrown in my face. For those of you who don’t know, this summer, I had the privilege of serving as the Assistant Camp Director at the Barbara C. Harris Camp. A summer camp that is run in association with the Diocese of Massachusetts. As you would imagine, we get into a lot of odd and sticky situations because you have dozens of children, a handful of counselors, and a whole summer camp with a lake, sports fields, arts and crafts, and so much sugar. 

One of the fun things we did was a water carnival. For the uninitiated, it involves remaking your classic field games with water-based elements. You use a big bucket of water for the “goose” in duck-duck-goose, for example. The first week, it went ~~swimmingly~~, we had some logistical hitches (the cups we were using for one of the games kept breaking, though such are logistical hitches at summer camp). But overall, it was all going very well—until–I hear a piercing scream and see a rabid band of teenage girls sprinting for one of the big buckets we were using to refill the game stations. 

Now, I think if you are a parent or have worked in childcare before, you will know the difference between “good scream” and “bad scream”. Two thoughts went through my head very quickly: these were good screams, and I know what is going to happen next. The moment the other children (and counselors) realized what was happening…all bets were off. Any structure to whatever games we were running broke down as mobs of children descended on the closest refill station with whatever receptacle (re: water based weapon) they had in hand.

In the moment, there was a feeling of loss as the very well-thought out afternoon I had meticulously planned for the benefit of these campers gave way to absolute chaos. There was a brief period of uncertainty as I locked eyes with the camp director–I again suspect many parents will know what I am talking about–and wondered if something dangerous was about to happen that we needed to stop. And a lot of feelings of water in my eyes as the campers I so dedicatedly served day after day repeatedly threw cups of water in my face–in their defense,  I did, as Assistant Camp Director, comandeer the main hose for my weapon of choice at the beginning of this water altercation. 

As we ran out of the various sources of water, and shut off the hose, and people stopped and looked around, there was exactly what I had expected: a bunch of happy campers and counselors. In that afternoon, something that easily could have been a disaster or disapointment instead became an amazingly fun moment.  

Believe it or not, this is reflected in our scriptures: in our moments when we feel helpless, or when things are falling apart, God is still operating towards our restoration.

In Mark today we experience an example of a miraculous restoration of a beggar. I think it is easy to say that this man is restored from blindness to sightedness–though I don’t think that is exactly a faithful reading. The first reason is that Eli, an important teacher and leader, is blind for at least one important part of his story. This shows that rather than blindness being this beggar’s primary issue, it is the fact that his community abandoned him in a time of need that is the issue. The second reason I think it isn’t about the blindness per say is that Jesus asks the man what it is he wants–Jesus does not assume that what this man needs is his sight. Of course, the transformation that takes place restores this man’s sight, like he asks, but it seems to be more about his place in the community rather than the specific faculties he has. As we engage with this miraculous action of Jesus, it would behove us to remember this. 

In any case, in Mark Jesus acts for the restoration of this man. It is crowded, Jesus and the disciples are approaching Jerusalem and the events of the crucifixion. It is probably already chaotic and overstimulating, and this beggar imposes himself on an already inconvenient situation. Jesus, in the chaos of the situation and in what appears to be the hopelessness of this man’s life, intervenes acts for his restoration. Similarly, in Jeremiah, God promises to restore the people and gather them back to Him after they have been under exile. Not only that, God promises to gather them from the farthest parts of the earth, and to gather all the people–not just the able bodied people who can travel easily. He promises to restore all of His people, and bring them back with consolation. 

It is easy to say that God acts for our restoration if the stakes are water in your face, and maybe a few children with some water stuck in their ears. It is also easy to recognize this restorative activity of God as something that has happened to these Bibilical heroes, and relegate it to the dust of ancient history. 

Maya Shankar was studying the violin at Julliard, and was by all accounts going to be one of the best violinists of our time. The entirety of her life revolved only around one thing, one instrument, and being great at it. Until one normal day, when she was practicing like she did every other day, she permanently injured her hand–and would never be able to play the violin ever again. The entirety of what she built her life on was suddenly ripped out from under her, all of the time she had spent over the course of decades was entirely wasted. 

Maya Shankar would eventually go on to receive her doctorate in neuroscience many years after this tragic twist of fate. In her life now she hosts a popular podcast called “A Slight Change of Plans” where week after week she interviews people whose lives have been completely overturned by some force: career-ending injuries like her own, but also other accidents and tragedies that have robbed people of their life’s work, and even sense of identity. 

In each case though, these people find that they are not actually as “done” as they thought they would be. If you had asked Dr. Shankar at Julliard what she would have done without being able to play the violin, she would have told you that her very life, her reason of existence, would be entirely gone. And yet, here she is today with an award winning podcast that provides not only a sense of meaning to Dr. Shankar, but also is a phenomenal help to others who may be experiencing something like she did. Even in a career ending injury, robbed of her mission in life, it does not seem like God was done acting in Dr. Shankar’s life. Like our beggar who transforms into a follower of Christ, and like the people who are brought back from exile, Dr. Shankar found a restoration after an immense tragedy, and helps others find their restoration after tragedy.

I have given you a relatively silly example–water fights at summer camp. And a relatively extreme example in Dr. Shankar. Though maybe you, like Dr. Shankar, were at some point going to be the next “great” in whatever skill you pursued. I suspect though, that many of us find ourselves in a more ordinary mess than that. We may not be a beggar on the road outside Jericho, nor are we in exile, and we likely have not experienced career ending tragedies. Our messy situations might be harder to define: bad grades, lost or strained relationships, goals we never acheived, promotions we did not get, or other shortcomings and disappointments that add up.

Even so, our scriptures today remind us that even when things are falling apart–like a group of rabid teenagers descending on you with water to throw in your face; when things seem hopeless–like a blind beggar maligned by his society; when we have a career ending injury, and our life’s purpose is irreversibly taken away from us; or when we amount what might be a more normal amount of failures, God is never done with us. Not only that, but that God is the master of taking what we believe to be a hopeless situation, a blind beggar, a people far away from home in exile, and showing us that our notions of hopelessness are not God’s plan. 

Archbishop Desmond Tutu puts it better than I could: “There is no such thing as a totally hopeless case. Our God is an expert at dealing with chaos, with brokenness, with all the worst that we can imagine. God created order out of disorder, cosmos out of chaos, and God can do so always, can do so now”. In Jeremiah God led the people from a sense of brokenness to a sense of wholeness, in Mark God made a beggar a follower of Christ, and God is operating in our world and in our lives today. In the name of the one who loved us first. Amen

Sermon — October 20, 2024

The Rev. Greg Johnston

I came across an article this week entitled “The Road to Hell is Paved With… ‘Other Duties As Assigned.’”

The author, a recruiter and consultant, writes, “I spend a lot of time talking with employers and candidates about job descriptions. Almost universally, employers list ‘Other duties as assigned’ among the bullet points outlining a given role. The intention is well-meaning on the employer’s part… I mean, the job description cannot effectively capture every job or task you’d ever ask an employee to consider, right?”

But he goes on to describe all the ways in which “other duties as assigned” can become a trap. The phrase is ambiguous when the org chart isn’t quite clear—other duties, “as assigned” by whom? Inessential tasks can end up being prioritized over the core part of the job. The work someone ends up doing day-to-day can be quite different from the task they thought they were signing up for, or what they’re skilled at. “Other duties as assigned” can provide a rationale for all sorts of ill effects.

And yet it occurs to me that much of life consists of taking on “other duties as assigned.” What’s true at work for working people is even more true outside of work for all of us. I think of all the spouses whose relationships transform from a romantic story of love to a less glamorous caretaking role some time later. I think of all the parents whose children’s roads to adulthood aren’t quite the smooth highway they signed up for—surely the job description is to keep them “alive until 25,” right, and then you’re done? I think of church wardens who become, in the event of an emergency, the acting rector of a church; and of clergy who feel God calling them l to preach the good news of Jesus’ love for the world, only to find out that the work of ministry consists in large part of folding and unfolding chairs.

I think of the apostles James and John, who ask to sit at Jesus’ right hand in glory, and at his left; and find that his idea of what that means turns out to be quite different from theirs.

I want to give James and John some credit this week, because their part in this story is actually even worse than it seems. There’s a bit of context skipped over in the transition between last Sunday’s gospel and this one. This story begins, with Jesus and his disciples “on the road, going up to Jerusalem… And, once again,” Mark writes, “taking the Twelve aside, Jesus began to tell them about what was about to happen. ‘Look,’” Jesus says, “‘we’re going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they’re going to hand him over to the Romans… who will beat him, and kill him, and after three days, he’ll rise again.”

And it’s then, in the middle of this speech, that James and John come up to ask: “Is there still space in the C-suite here? Have you filled those openings for a left- and right-hand man?”

I’m sorry— Were you even listening to what he just said?

They clearly weren’t, and Mark gives it away with a single, well-placed word in the narrative. He writes that Jesus began to tell them about what was to happen… and while Mark the narrator lets Jesus finish for our sake, James and John jump in, interrupting Jesus before he’s had to finish saying the rest.

But they already know it all. This isn’t the first time he’s predicted his suffering and death. They’re going up to Jerusalem, where it’s all going to go down. But the disciples are stuck in an old frame of mind. They’re still thinking he’s going to establish a new kingdom on earth. They want to be enthroned at his right hand and his left “in glory.”

But if you’ve ever seen a painting of the crucifixion, or heard the story of the Passion, you know what it means to be seated at Jesus’ right hand and at his left. It means to be nailed up there, on a cross, one of the two bandits who’ve been crucified on either side.

So Jesus tells them: You can be my right-hand man, or left. You can be my second-in-command—“and other duties, as assigned.”

Well, he doesn’t quite say it that way. He checks: “Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or to be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?” Absolutely we are, they say. Maybe they’re still imagining the royal cup at the feast and the luxurious bath in the palace. Jesus sizes them up. “You’re going to drink that cup, all right, and you’re going to be baptized like I am. But to sit at my right hand or my left? Well, that part isn’t in my hands to give.”

It’s the Romans, after all, who will choose which of the criminals before them deserve death. And it’s God who’ll decide who sits at Jesus’ right hand in the end.

And then, as he often does, Jesus follows his specific response to a specific situation with a more general point. Among the Gentiles, he says, the leaders “lord it over” them, and their great ones are like tyrants. But not among you. “Whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant,” Jesus says. James and John come looking for a promotion, trying to outmaneuver the other disciples with a kind of naïve office politics, as though they could secure the top jobs by simply calling dibs.

But Jesus responds: If you want to be a leader in the church, you need to serve. It’s not the scale of your ambition that matters, but the depth of your service. If I, Jesus, the Son of Man, came not to be served but to serve, to give my life for you—how much more should you be servants of the others in this world? And we extrapolate from this conversation to build up an idea of “servant leadership,” the kind of leadership in which authority comes from being a servant first.

There’s a nuance to what Jesus says here that’s missing in nearly every translation I see.

Jesus doesn’t use what’s called the “jussive” here, the third-person imperative form, in Greek. He doesn’t actually say, “those who wish to become great among you—let them serve!” or “they should serve!” It’s simply the future tense: “Whoever wants to be great among you will be your servant.”

That isn’t a command: “Your leaders must serve!” It isn’t a strategy: “If someone wants to become a leader, she ought to put some service work on the resume.” It’s a simple, declarative claim: Whoever wants to be great, will serve.

Greatness, for a Christian, is found in those “other duties as assigned.”

This implies something for every one of us, whether we think of ourselves as leaders or not. It tells us that our greatness in God’s eyes is not measured by the moments in which we think that we are great. The measure of our greatness is not how close we rise to the top of the organizational chart, but how tenderly we serve whoever’s at the bottom. The moments in our lives when we are closest to Christ are not when we’re surrounded by adoring crowds—they’re the moments when we are barely hanging on.

Ten years after I move on from this church, nobody will know how many times I changed the cover on the changing pad in the bathroom, and brought it home to wash. No one will know that I once spent thirty minutes on the phone trying to help a senior citizen install Zoom—only to fail, because she didn’t have her email password written down. You’ll see me ritually washing people’s feet on many a Maundy Thursday to come, but will you ever ask—Who empties out the foot-wash water? Who washes out the used foot-washing bowl?

No one will know but me, and God, and that’s the way these things should go. And this is true for every one of you, as well. No one will ever stand and applaud you for the diapers you have changed. You might never be thanked for cleaning up the abandoned muffin tray after breakfast at work. No one will know how often you visited a parent or friend who was sick; sometimes they won’t even know you were there.

The things we do to care for one another day to day are some of the most draining and least-prestigious work. But they are the moments in which we are especially dear to God. Because greatness in God’s eyes is not found in sitting in glory at Jesus’ right hand or his left; our greatness comes, day after day, in unnamed, unnoticed, “other duties as assigned.”

Lectionary Readings

So, I have a confession to make, although you’ve probably realized by now. I am a bit of know-it-all. Whatever the subject, whatever the topic, I have always yearned to be the smartest kid in the class.

I remember one day in seventh-grade biology class when there was a quiz that I was rushing through as fast as I could because I wanted to be the first one to hand it in. And I brought it up to the teacher, and I remember he just looked at me, and he looked at the paper, and he said, “Are you sure you’re done? You’ve got some time. Go check it over and come back.” He knew what was up. I didn’t just want to know it all. I wanted to look like I knew it all. And while he wasn’t going to dock me points for showing off, he was going to send me back to my chair, with that quiz still in my hand, because there were no bonus point for finishing a thirty-minute quiz in ten.

I’m not bitter about it. That would be crazy, right? …But I’m reminded of this story when I think about how Jesus responds when he’s confronted on the road with a question from this rich young man.

Jesus is heading out for the day, and a man runs up to him, and falls down on his knees—this doesn’t often happen to me, thank God—and says, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” (Mark 10:18) Now, you might think that this is exactly the sort of question that Jesus is there to answer. You might think that religion is about how to get to heaven, and so on, and so you might think that Jesus will have something to say. Jesus is a wise and thoughtful teacher, after all. If there’s something we need to know, some wisdom from on high, surely he can give it to us.

What Jesus says instead is a little strange. “Good Teacher,” the man calls Jesus, and Jesus replies, first: “Why do you call me good?” And then, “You know the commandments” already, he lists them off. They aren’t hard to learn. Murder, adultery, theft, perjury, fraud; dishonoring your parents. You call me “Good Teacher,” Jesus says, but no one is good but God, and I have nothing to teach you but things you already know. There’s no secret knowledge you need; just go do it.

And the man says, “Well yeah, I mean, I’ve done all those things.” But he seems to want something more. And Jesus looks at him, and loves him, and says, “Okay, then… there’s just one thing that you lack: it’s to give up everything you have.” “Go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor…. Then come, follow me.” (Mark 10:21)

And the man is shocked, and goes away grieving, for he has many possessions. (10:22)

It’s easy to misinterpret these words, in one direction or the other. On the one hand, there’s a long tradition of interpretations that try to explain them away. My favorite example of this is the claim, which some of you may have heard, that there was a gate in the wall of Jerusalem called “The Eye of the Needle.” It was a narrow gate, the story goes, too small for a camel to walk through loaded up with all its goods. But if you unloaded all that baggage off the camel’s back, and if the camel got down on its knees, it could just squeeze through.

Now, this is the kind of thing that preachers crave: the historical tidbit or missing piece of context that makes it all make sense. If this is true, then it gives a different tone to what Jesus says. The wealthy can get into heaven, Jesus would be saying, if they unload themselves of their attachment to their wealth, and get down on their knees, and enter through the gate. (And, conveniently, then you can carry the baggage through and load it back onto the camel and be on your way, unchanged but for a moment of humility.)

There’s just one problem with this illuminating fact: it’s entirely made up. While it would be nice if it were true, there is in fact absolutely no evidence that there ever was such a gate. It’s a neat story, but it’s too neat; it seems almost perfectly designed to let us off the hook, without having to engage with what Jesus really says.

Of course, it’s possible to over-interpret what Jesus says in the other direction, too; you might understand his words as too general a rule. You might, for example, extract from this story the general principle “it’s as impossible for the rich to go to heaven as it is for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle,” and the general commandment, “go, sell what you have, and give the money to the poor.” And if you don’t consider yourself rich, then this can come with a certain kind of satisfaction. I may not have much in this life, you might think, but at least God likes me, unlike those people over there.

But of course, every one of us “has many possessions” in some sense, by comparison with our ancestors, or with other people in other places in the world. Some of us have significant wealth, others don’t, yet almost every one of us has, in her pocket, technology that would astound even the 1990s versions of ourselves, and that’s not to mention things like refrigeration and indoor plumbing that would astound our ancestors. Every one of us is rich, if only relatively so.

But even more than that, the story here matters. Jesus doesn’t deliver these words as universal truths. He tells the disciples, in private, that it’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God. But this is a specific case of the truly general rule: “How hard it is to enter the kingdom of God!” (10:24) He doesn’t address a crowd with a speech, “All of you who are wealthy, you must sell what you own and give the money to the poor.” He answers a specific man, when pressed, with a specific invitation.

And the specifics of the story make a difference, for me. The man comes running up to Jesus, wanting to be the best. It’s a public question: He wants to be seen handing in his quiz. He asks, “Good Teacher, what must I do?” And Jesus deflects. No one’s good, but here’s what God has given you to do. “Oh yeah yeah yeah!” the man seems to say, I know that no one’s good, but I’m good. I’ve done all those things you said! What else do I have to do? And Jesus looks at him, and loves him, and asks him to give up what he’s holding onto most dearly.

Peter and the disciples misunderstand. “But Jesus,” they say, “we’ve left everything we have.” (10:28) Are we good? At least we’re better than him, right? As usual, they’re missing the point. There’s nothing they can do, no action they can take, that can achieve the kind of self-justification they’re looking for. Whether it’s the rich young man who keeps all the commandments or the poor old disciples who’ve given up everything to follow Jesus, there is nothing they can do, nothing any of us can do, to become worthy of God’s love.

And yet God loves us, and God loves them—God loves you—nevertheless.

Every one of us, in one way or another, has something in common with that man out on the road: “Yeah, yeah! I’ve done everything right! Now would you validate me please? In front of everyone?” Every one of us is in some way like those disciples later on, who say, “Okay, Jesus, but—We’re not like that other guy, right? We’re doing things right?” I’m rich, but I’m not that rich? Or, thank God, for once, I’m poor? Some of you might even be like me, wanting to be the one to hand in the quiz first, because that must mean we’re worth something, right?

And Jesus looks at us, and loves us, and challenges us to give that up.

“For we do not have,” as the Letter to the Hebrews writes, “a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin.” We have a Savior who comes down among us, and is like us. We have a God who knows what it is to be us, who can empathize with our every weakness and lend us another ounce of strength, who walks alongside us so that we can “approach the throne of grace with boldness,” so that we may “receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” (Hebrews 4:15-16)

Lectionary Readings

Jesus’ words this week are hard for many people, for many different reasons. I don’t know how many of you listening right now have been divorced, and whether that was a good thing in your life or a hard one, or more likely, both. I don’t know how many of you are the children of parents who were divorced, or have seen your own children or siblings or friends go through divorce, and had those very different experiences of the disruption of family. I don’t know how many of you have known people who probably should be divorced, but aren’t, and have had to deal with that. I do know roughly how many of you grew up in church traditions that explicitly forbid divorce, and I suspect you’ve seen endure people abusive relationships as a result. Whatever the case may be, I don’t think it’s an easy topic for anyone—in a hundred different ways, Jesus’ words about divorce are hard to hear, and that’s because divorce is hard.

Sometimes it’s helpful to say a word about our own church’s position on things like this, for anyone listening who doesn’t know. Unsurprisingly, I think it’s a pretty good one. It’s actually enshrined in our church’s canon law that when someone comes to a member of the clergy because their marriage is in distress, the first duty of that priest is “to protect and promote the physical and emotional safety of those involved and only then… to labor that the parties may be reconciled.” (Constitution and Canons I.19.1) In cases of abuse or pain, physical or emotional, our first duty is to protect the person in front of us from harm. If and only if it’s safe for both people to remain in that marriage, then we try to honor their marriage vows by working toward reconciliation, trying to help repair that relationship. And yet sometimes, a marriage comes to an end; and yes, we will celebrate and bless second marriages after divorce. (And I’ll say for myself, as the child of two parents who divorced and later each re-married—I’m very glad that that’s the case.)

And this is, I hope you’ll agree, a reasonable and a nuanced attitude. There’s just one problem. Our attitude may be quite nuanced on this topic. But Jesus’ attitude? Maybe a bit less so.

So I want to take a second look at what Jesus has to say to us this morning, and I want to put in the context of three different things: in the context of the story itself, what’s happening in Jesus’ life when he says these words; in the context of first-century Judaism, the conversation that’s going on around Jesus relative to which he’s taking a position; and in the context of the whole long story of the Bible, the story of God and God’s creation. And then, if possible, we’ll bring it back to the present day.

So first: What’s happening in the Gospel when Jesus says these things? You might recall from a few weeks ago that Jesus is on the road from Galilee in the north, where he’s been teaching and healing, down toward Jerusalem in the south, where he’s predicted several times that he will suffer and die. He’s just arrived in Judea, the region around Jerusalem, and crowds have gathered again. We’ve arrived in the third quarter of Mark’s gospel: we had his ministry in Galilee and his journey to Judea; now his brief ministry in Judea, followed by his arrest, and trial, and death. The focus of the story has turned from Jesus’ life toward his death. And it’s now that “some Pharisees [come], and to test him they ask, ‘Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?’” (Mark 10:2)

It matters who’s asking the question, and when. It matters why they’re asking. This handful of Pharisees aren’t asking about divorce because they’re really curious, because they want to learn from Jesus. They’re not asking about a concrete case. They’re asking about the general rule, in the abstract, because they want to test him. They want to trip him up, to undermine him, to find some reason to accuse him of a gaffe. Jesus has a bit of a reputation for playing fast and loose with laws and customs ranging from what to do on the Sabbath to whether you’re required to ritually purify your hands before you eat. And others have tried to trip him up before, to make him look too liberal in a sense. But that’s not what Jesus does this time. He replies, “What does Moses say?” In other words, “What’s in the Torah? What’s in the Law?” (Mark 10:3) And when they answer—Moses allows a man to divorce his wife—Jesus doesn’t do what they expect. He doesn’t loosen the requirements of the law. He strengthens it, and their attempt to accuse him of abandoning the law God gave to Moses falls flat.

The Pharisees’ answer to Jesus’ question is right. Moses did “allow a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce” his wife. (Mark 10:3) This isn’t an old-fashioned or gender-exclusive translation, by the way. The Torah allows a man to divorce his wife; not vice versa. We have historical evidence of a few women, aristocrats or wealthy merchants, who divorced their husbands; but these were cases of prominent women whose power allowed them to flaunt the Law, not follow it. The legal debate among religious scholars in Jesus’ day wasn’t about whether a man could divorce his wife, as the Pharisees asked—it was all about “when,” as in it was allowed. Rabbinic tradition records a disagreement, for example, between the “House of Shammai,” one of two rabbinic schools of thought, who taught that “a man should divorce his wife only” for reasons of “unchastity, since it is said,” and here they quote a verse from Deuteronomy, “‘Because he has found in her indecency in anything.’” But the House of Hillel, the other school, reply, “No,” he can divorce her “even if she spoiled his dish, since it is said, ‘Because he has found in her indecency in anything.’” (Mishnah Gittin 9:10) Infamously, a century later Rabbi Akiba would add: “Even if he found another more beautiful than she.” (This opinion did not win the debate, by the way.)

This is what Jesus means by “hardness of heart.” (Mark 10:5)

This was roughly the scope of the debate: analyzing the particular words from the Law of Moses that authorize divorce, and trying to parse out exactly the circumstances.

Jesus rejects that approach, in this case. He stops parsing the particular words of the law, and tries to put it in a much broader perspective. He re-tells the story of creation itself, the first moment of the first relationship between two human beings, that day in the Garden of Eden when God first says, “It is not good that Adam should be alone.” (Gen. 2:18) This is how things were before they ate the fruit. This is how things ere before the Fall. And this, Jesus says, is the way things ought to be. “Therefore those whom God has joined together let no one put asunder.”

Jesus is confronted on the road, on the way to his destruction, by people who want to force him into a gaffe, and he says—This is not the way the world was supposed to be. Jesus grows up listening to debates over exactly when a man can send his wife away, and Jesus says—This is not the way the world once was. And he seems to offer them a dream: Maybe one day the world won’t be this way. And he turns away from all-too-adult things to lift up the faith of children.

So where does that leave us?

It leaves us with the conclusion that this is not the way the world is supposed to be; and yet this is the way the world is. This isn’t the way that marriage is supposed to be; and yet it’s the way that it is. The end of any relationship, marriage or not, is inevitably a mess, whether you are one of the partners in it, or a child of it, or simply a friend or family member watching things fall apart.

And yet God is always with us in the mess. That’s who Jesus is. Jesus embodies God’s willingness to enter into a world in which things are not the way that they should be, not to destroy it or to punish it but to share the load that human beings carry, without compassion and care. And Jesus embodies as well the way in which God can bring forth new things of beauty from places of sadness and loss. There is no easy answer or simple rule that can handle the messiness of human life. More often than not, there is only the least bad choice. But the God who was born and died and rose again for us is still with us, working in and through the hardest parts of our lives, bearing our sorrows and transforming us, in the end, into something new.

Lectionary Readings

Admittedly, there are many paths a sermon on this gospel reading could take. Off the dome there are four different, very intense, moments that could each be their own sermon. There is the stranger performing exorcisms, there is the drowning oneself, there is the cutting off of various limbs, and the business about salt and fire. When this is the case in preaching, I actually find it helpful to “zoom out” and get a better sense of how we got to such an intense place.

Intrepid observers may have already realized that today’s gospel actually picks up right where last week’s left off. John’s piece of dialogue picks up right after Jesus’ remark about welcoming the children from last week. Which is not actually that easy to catch if you are not paying close attention to the verse numbers–our reading starts with what is arguably an interruption of a longer speech from Jesus. This seems particularly true because his speech that spans last week’s and this week’s readings appears in the Gospel of Matthew without John’s interruption about the exorcist. 

Here I will say that throughout my Biblical studies, I have developed a favorite group of characters. The disciples of Jesus across all the gospels are by far my favorite characters. For many reasons, but one stands head and shoulders above the rest: they are almost constantly wrong. In so many instances, at least one disciple is misunderstanding, misinterpreting, or acting out of turn in the gospels.

We have a prime example of this in John’s interruption in today’s reading. To me, it appears almost comical for John to stop Jesus in the middle of this speech about welcoming children, not overlooking them, and helping them in their faith. To tell him about something that probably could have just waited until after he was done. 

Not only is John acting out of turn in his interruption of Jesus, but his acting out of turn is compounded by what he interrupts to tell Jesus. The disciples have stopped a strange man from performing excorsisms in the name of Jesus. To which Jesus informs them that they have actually missed the point entirely. Stopping someone in doing good works is not a part of the plan– and creating both a divide (the man is not one of us) and a hierarchy (we get to decide who gets to do what), is also not part of the plan. 

Getting back to Jesus’s speech, after that annoying interruption (or introduction, depending on how you look at it). We get to the good stuff where Jesus gets to finish his speech with the millstone, the drowning, the limb cutting, and the salt and fire business. Welcome the children, do not cause them to stumble, do not let yourselves stumble, and be at peace with one another. All easy enough, cut and dry. 

But what does stumbling actually mean? And really, why keep the interruption in this Gospel when they got rid of it in Matthew? There are, in fact, about seven other times in the gospel of Mark where demons are cast out, and such a remark would have been more natural. The gospel writers could have taken this into account when writing it down, made a minor editorial choice to make things flow better. 

I suspect that the interruption is not, actually, an interruption in the end. The actions of John, I would say, are a pretty clear cut example of “causing one to stumble”, in the way that he stops the man from performing exorcisms, which is a good deed (it is also important to bear in mind that exorcisms in the ancient world were life-restoring acts, not the “Emily Rose” situations we might think of today). Also, I think John’s actions are even what it means to “stumble” for oneself. In stopping this man from performing his exorcisms, John has set himself up as someone with the power to decide what should happen, and who should get to do it–and he has created an exclusive group of Christ followers. 

To return to my question–to stumble, then, is not to do something “bad” or something that is against a “law”–though maybe those are included, and I would not say Jesus wants us to do bad things. Rather, stumbling seems to have a few different definitions depending on the person and situation: to stumble might be to be stopped in your faith, or to create division in the community, or to think so highly of yourself as to stop someone else in their faith. 

The aftereffects of stumbling should not be taken lightly either. And I suspect the warning from Jesus is so grave not because God looks for our self mutilation or our pain, but because these kinds of things are so easy to fall into–or to stumble into, to use a different phrasing.  By thinking highly of ourselves, and by creating divisions where there should be unity, and by creating hierarchy– we reject the need for our togetherness. We reject the command that Jesus gives at the end of this week’s gospel lesson: to have peace among ourselves. I think the warning is stark because the presumption that we are right, that we know better; the pride that we should be able to handle things ourselves; and the assumption that we should tell that strange guy to stop doing exorcisms, are all such incredibly easy things to do. 

As Christians, it seems that this story would call us to get off of whatever high horse we may be on, and to stay off it. It is a call to seek out a way to end divisions, to include those who we might otherwise exclude, and to rid ourselves of the assumptions that we are the ones who know best. One example that comes to mind as a huge church nerd, is the fact that the Episcopal Church and Methodist Church have finally decided that unity is more important than our own sense of self importance. This past summer, the United Methodist Church voted to enter into full communion with the Episcopal Church, our vote to affirm this is expected the next time we convene. What this does, in short terms, is recognizes the validity of the other denomination, and allows adherents of both denominations to work together without fear of reprisal from their respective denominational authorities. 

As people, the call of this story would seem to be into a sense of unity and togetherness; to think that we actually do want the stranger performing exorcisms to keep doing exactly that; to think that we actually should not endeavor to do our lives, work, and ministry by ourselves or in our exclusive groups. This is echoed in our readings outside the Gospel for today. God’s solution when Moses complains about the burdens of leadership, and the hardship of the desert, is not to give Moses more power; nor is it to tell Moses to “buck up”. God’s solution and God’s involvement in the life of Moses is to give him more people to do the good work with him. In James’s letter, he does not tell the people to anoint themselves, or to pray for themselves, or to help themselves out of their own sinful ways. The solution James understands for the problems of his community is the unity of people in their faith. 

My friends it seems that stumbling is not such an easy act to define, and is clearly seen only in what seems to be an interruption. When we exclude those who are doing good work–we stumble; when we think ourselves to proud to include the exorcist we do not know–we stumble, when we overlook the children and little ones in our midst–we stumble; when we act out of our own sense of importance and impede others–we stumble. The solution is never to divide and exclude, nor to assume that we will make it on our own (without the exorcist, without the additional prophets, without each other). God’s solution to Moses is togetheness, and God’s desire in Mark is for unity. Nowhere is the final blessing we hear in our services more needed than in these moments of stumbling–be swift to love and make haste to be kind: to the strange exorcist be swift to love, to the little ones who beleive in Jesus be kind, and “have salt in yourselves and be at peace with one another”. In the name of the one who loved us first. 

Lectionary Readings

Sometimes we talk about our spiritual lives as a kind of quest, an adventure toward an unknown destination in the hope of finding treasure along the way. We seek enlightenment. We look for meaning. We talk about finding God in the sunset, or in the woods, or finding God in other people.

And life is a quest, a voyage into the unknown. The world is a complicated and strange place, and let’s face it: You can show up to church every week, you can try to spend some time in meditation or in prayer, you can talk a walk through nature or through the city as often as you like, but you never know quite when or where you’re going to encounter God.

Except, here’s the thing: Jesus tells us exactly when and where to find him. It’s just that when we do, it sometimes doesn’t quite feel how we expect.

So, the New Testament and I have been on close personal terms for a while now, and I can think of four different places where Jesus tells us where we can find him when we go looking.

First and foremost, he says that we can find him in the Eucharist, in the bread and wine that we receive, after he hear him say, yet again, “This is my Body,” and “This is my Blood.” However physically or spiritually you want to interpret that, the Church has always believed and the experience of individual Christians has often confirmed that we encounter God in a unique way in this communion meal; that this is not only a symbol or a reminder of Christ’s life, but a place in which he truly does become present. So, place one: bread and wine.

Place number two, Jesus tells the disciples that “where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” (Matthew 18:20) And we tend to extrapolate from there—where two or three or thirty-tree or three-hundred-and-three are gathered in Jesus’ name, there Jesus is among them. So when we come here, on Sundays; or when a smaller group gathers on Thursday mornings for our Bible study, or Thursday evenings for Centering Prayer; whether it’s the choir rehearsing or the Garden Committee pruning or the children of the church stampeding around, wherever two or three are gathered in his name, Jesus is there.

Third: Jesus tells us that we find him in people who are hungry and thirsty, sick or in prison or in need of clothes. He tells us that whenever we feed someone who is hungry, we feed him; whenever we clothe someone who lacks clothing, we clothe him; whenever we visit someone who is sick or in prison we’re visiting him. And after listing each of these specific cases, he states the general principle: “Truly I tell you,” he says, “just as you did it to the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.” (Matthew 25:31-40)

These three are the ones we tend to repeat in the Church. The high church folks will tell you about the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. The low church folks will tell you about finding Jesus in a small group gathered for prayer. The social justice wing of the church has started whole ministries on the basis of this last quotation from Matthew 25. Heck, just this week one Episcopal Church out in Oregon just won a $400,000 lawsuit against their city, which tried to shut down their ministry to people who are homeless and hungry, because a federal judge agreed that feeding people who are hungry is a religious act.

But we don’t often talk explicitly about the fourth place Jesus tells us we will meet him in this world, the one that he tells us about in the Gospel reading today.

The disciples are arguing with one another about who is the greatest. They have, as usual, completely missed the point. They’ve forgotten the reminder that if they want to follow him, they should take up the cross. They still think they’re going to find greatness in this world; that following the way of the cross on which Jesus will die will somehow lead to glory.

So he tells them, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all, and servant of all.” And then he takes a “little child” and he “puts it among them,” and he says: “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) And that’s the fourth place you can find Jesus, according to him. Not only when you receive communion or gather in his name; not only when you feed the hungry, or visit the sick; but even when you welcome a child in Jesus’ name, you’ll find Jesus there.

You might draw a connection to Jesus’ message about what true greatness is. You might even draw a connection to words we heard just before it, from James. The disciples are full of the wisdom of this world. They have “bitter envy and selfish ambition” in their hearts. They are, as James says, “boastful”; their arrogance will lead to “disorder and wickedness of every kind.” (James 3:14-16)

But then Jesus shows them a child. And on the one hand, the ideals of childhood seems to match so much of what James has to say. It’s the children of the world, Jesus might seem to say, the innocent, pure, humble children of the world, who are the model for the adults; it’s not the leader who’s the most arrogant or brash who is the greatest, but the one who is the most child-like.

On the other hand: Have you ever met a child?

I love children. I really do. I love my child, I love the children of this church. Taking children seriously, listening to their hopes and their concerns, is as much a part of my job as listening to the rest of you. And really, it can be pretty fun.

But I have never yet met a child who is “peaceable” and “willing to yield,” “full of mercy” and “without a trace of hypocrisy.” Sometimes it feels like half the day is taken up with “coveting something” that they “cannot obtain,” and that’s not to mention the inevitable “disorder… of every kind.” Not to mention, if Jesus’ issue is that the disciples are standing around arguing about who’s the best, then I don’t think being more like children is going to solve the problem.

Only: That isn’t what he says.

He doesn’t tell the disciples that if they want to become great, they should become more like children. He tells them that if they want to become great, they need to be willing to care for children. He tells them that they need to get down off their pedestals and welcome a child. They need to give up their pretensions to theological perfection and get their hands dirty instead, sometimes very literally.

Caring for children doesn’t always feel like a spiritual practice. It doesn’t tend to replenish and refresh us in the kind of way we’re looking for when we say we’re seeking God. There are moments of awe and wonder, of course, and plenty of fun, but “welcoming children,” in Jesus’ name or not, is exhausting work. Jesus tells us that when we do welcome children, we will encounter God there. But it doesn’t always feel like we’re encountering God. Sometimes it just feels very loud.

But of course: That’s true for those other three places, too. We don’t always feel God where we know we meet God. It’s a rare person who comes to communion every week and experiences a deep sense of spiritual fulfillment. We feel this way sometimes, but less often than we hope or need.

Wherever two or three are gathered in his name, Jesus may well be there. But churches are made of people—that’s the problem—and they are as full of rudeness and bad behavior as any other collection of people is. Many, many people burn out on the church, not because of any big trauma or abuse, but because of a thousand small frustrations that lead them to wash their hands of it all.

It’s easy to romanticize the act of feeding people who are hungry, or visiting people who are in prison; even visiting someone who’s sick isn’t always so pleasant. People act like people do, and even more so when they’re going through a hard time.

And yet, Jesus tells us that we will find him there. This is what it means to do what he said last week: to take up our crosses and follow him. This is what it means to be great in the kingdom of God, to roll up your sleeves and serve. To do something that might not feel like you’ve arrived at an enlightened state; but to do something to care for someone whom society considers “the least” of its concern. And to remember that even if you don’t feel God in that moment, Jesus is right there.

Lectionary Readings

“Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers and sisters,
for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.” (James 3:1) Amen.

James’s warning seems both funny and appropriate today, as we plan to bless our students and educators, to offer prayers for those who learn and, perhaps especially, for those who teach. Classes, after all, have begun, from kindergarten all the way through college. Our Sunday School classes will begin next week. Our Thursday-morning group is already underway. We’re making plans for possible confirmations later this spring. And of course, every Sunday includes a moment of teaching right here, during the sermon.

James may be writing mostly about the kind of teaching we encounter in church. He’s warning his readers about the dangers of the preacher’s untameable tongue, about the higher bar that’s set for theological ramblings from the pulpit than casual conversation among friends. We entrust clergy with an uninterrupted fifteen minutes a week, and we have the power to do great good and/or great evil, depending on what we say, to be sure. But teaching isn’t just something I do, or something teachers do. It’s something we all do.

Every day of all our lives, every one of us is demonstrating something to the people around us. Every word we say models what is it to live a kind and loving life to the people around us. Or it doesn’t.  And if what James has to say is true for all of us, because we are all subject to the power of the tongue.

The bit in a horse’s mouth is tiny, James say, compared to the huge body of the horse; (3:3) a rudder is small, and yet it can turn the whole ship. (3:4) A small flame can start a forest fire, he says, and you better believe that the tongue is a fire. (3:5-6)

You may already know this to be true. If you’ve ever hurt the feelings of someone you love by saying something you shouldn’t—has this ever happened to you?—then you know what James means when he says, “From the same mouth come blessing and cursing.” And you can probably agree when he says, “My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so!” (3:10)

And yet, as James says, “All of us make many mistakes.” (3:2)

Our Gospel reading proves the point. It’s incredibly easy to say something wrong, even if most of what you say is right.

Jesus is walking with his disciples through the villages near Caesarea Philippi, thirty miles or so north of their home base in Galilee. And he asks the disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” They tell him there’s a rumor going around that Jesus is John the Baptist, returned from the dead to take vengeance on Herod and finish the work of repentance he began. Others say something even grander, that Jesus is Elijah, who had been taken up into heaven in a chariot of fire a thousand years before, and who was supposed to return before the Messiah came. Others are little more down to earth: he’s a prophet, and that’s reason enough to follow him.

“But who do you say that I am?” Jesus asks. And the disciples are silent. Maybe they’ve been listening to James. Maybe they’re afraid to make a mistake. All of the disciples are silent except one. Peter answers him, simply, “You are the Messiah.” (Mark 8:29) And while Jesus warns them not to tell anyone, (8:30) Peter is right. For now.

And Jesus begins to explain what being the Messiah means. What he says might seem familiar to us, because we already know how the story unfolds. But it’s shocking to them. Yes, Jesus is the Messiah, the anointed one of God. But he hasn’t come to resurrect the royal line of David and set up a new kingdom here on earth. He’s here for something else. This Messiah is going to suffer, and be rejected, and be killed, and after three days rise again. And I get the sense that Peter is so outraged by the first half of all that that he doesn’t even hear the end. He’s so upset about the failure and suffering of Christ that he doesn’t even hear the part about the resurrection. Peter takes Jesus aside and starts to rebuke him: Bad, Jesus! No! (8:32) But Jesus turns it right back around: “Get behind me, Satan!” (8:33)

Poor Peter. This is why nobody else wanted to raise their hand in class.

Of course, Jesus isn’t rebuking Peter because his answer was wrong. Jesus is the Messiah. He’s rebuking the temptation that Peter offers. And this makes sense based on who “Satan” is in the Bible: Satan is the accuser, the tempter, the one who afflicted Job to see if he would curse God, the who enticed Jesus with food during his wilderness to tempt him during his fast. Here, Peter is the tempter, the one who tries to lure Jesus away from the hard road toward the easy path. Surely, if he’s the Messiah, he doesn’t need to suffer. Surely he doesn’t need to die. But Peter’s temptation doesn’t undermine Jesus’ courage. It doesn’t turn him away from sacrificing himself to save us all. He rebukes Peter for his mistake, and then he explains: If you want to follow me, don’t try to tempt me away from a difficult life. If you want to follow me, then follow me along that same road. Take up your cross, he says. Make your own choice to sacrifice something for the good of someone else.

Words matter. But actions matter even more. Following Jesus isn’t just going to be a matter of saying, “You are the Messiah.” It’s going to take a willingness to give something up for love.

I wonder what that might mean for you. I wonder what it might mean to “take up your cross.” It doesn’t mean what it meant for Jesus. It doesn’t mean that you need to endure violence or pain at the hands of another person. You don’t, and you shouldn’t. But it means something. It means that if you want to follow Jesus—if you want to walk in love, as he loved us—You’re going to need to give up whatever is hindering your ability to love. And I can’t tell you what that is, for you. But there’s a chance that you already know, and it’s just that taking up your cross is hard.

And that’s the bad news, or the challenging invitation, for today.

But there’s good news, too, and it’s as much a part of this letter and this story as the rest. “All of us make many mistakes,” says James, the Brother of Jesus, Bishop of Jerusalem. Not “all of you,” but “all of us,” who teach. And yet his very words, his very teachings, still stand, two thousand years later, a part of the Bible’s canonical text. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Peter seems to say to Jesus, the Son of God. “You’re wrong about what the Messiah is supposed to do,” he tells the Messiah. This isn’t the high priest or the Roman governor, a Pharisee or Sadducee—this is Peter, who used to be Simon except that Jesus named him Peter, which means “Rock” in Greek, because he is the rock on whom Jesus will build the church. I love to point out from time to time how wrong or foolish Peter can be. Not because I want to put him down, but because it’s an incredible symbol of God’s forgiveness and grace that a person who is so imperfect, a person who makes so many mistakes, can still become the chosen and beloved instrument of God’s work in the world.

And so can you, you beloved, imperfect, child of God. Unless you are, as James says, a perfect person, you have made and you will make many mistakes in this life, including and especially with your tongue, with the words that come out of your mouth. But mistakes are not forever. Mistakes can be forgiven. The bit that turns the horse one way, can turn it back the other. The rudder can turn the ship to starboard as easily as to port. Mistakes can be forgiven, and mistakes can be corrected. And in a life which sometimes feels like it’s full of tests—whether we’re in school or out of it—it’s good news to remember that the one who’s grading you loves you so much that he took up his cross and laid his life for you. Amen.