Blog Archives

BELIEVING OR TRUSTING

1/31/2021

Jonah 3:1-5. 10

The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time: “Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you.” Jonah obeyed the word of the Lord and went to Nineveh.   Now Nineveh was a very large city; it took three days to go through it. Jonah began by going a day’s journey into the city, proclaiming, “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown.”

The Ninevites believed God.   A fast was proclaimed, and all of them, repented. When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened.

Last week I spoke on “call” stories – particularly Jesus, newly emerged from the wilderness, teaching and healing around Galilee and calling his first disciples to “come and go with me.” This week’s reading references another call story, but this one is from the Old Testament. I’ve preached on Jonah before — it’s one of my favorites stories — but I’ve always focused on either the beginning or the ending of the book. Today’s short reading comes from the middle - and I haven’t really spent a lot of time on this part.

In the first part, Jonah is called by God to prophesy and save the people of Nineveh . Now, so far this is a fairly standard call story. God picks someone to be his next “voice” and sends them somewhere to deliver a particular message to a particular people.

But this turns into a different kind of story because when God calls on Jonah, Jonah responds with a loud and fervent, “NO”.   Prophets don’t generally say “no” to God. The Ninevites had in the past proven themselves to be enemies of Israel which, of course, did not endear them to the Israelites. They were also a powerful, rich, and thereby arrogant people and Jonah flat out doesn’t want them to be saved. He goes through all manner of trouble trying to avoid doing God’s will — including getting tossed off a ship and ending up in the belly of a whale.

In today’s reading he finally gives up and does what God wants and the Ninevites are saved.   At the ending of the book they’re still saved and Jonah is still royally angry because God used him to save the folks he hated so much that he spends the whole fourth chapter sulking. Jonah is an odd little book about an odd little prophet.

In the past I’ve always looked at what Jonah did or did not do. Today, in reading this middle piece, I see that it is more about what God does, than anything Jonah thinks or feels. Now, that should be obvious to anyone doing exegetical work on a scripture passage, but Jonah is so entertaining that I’m always distracted by his crazy antics.

It is God, of course, who initiates the whole story. God who chose Jonah in the first place for a role in this story by calling him to do something that he will do absolutely anything to get out of doing. And it’s God who chides Jonah at the end of the story when he still just wants to sit and sulk.

But here in the middle, it is God, who after all Jonah’s attempts to avoid his calling, patiently sends Jonah out a second time, to do what he wanted him to do in the first place. And this time Jonah goes, grumbling all the way, and ends up walking the streets of Nineveh crying out, “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown.”

And here is the amazing piece — the Ninevites listen—and they repent—and they are saved! Who would have seen that coming? Well, obviously God did. The Ninevites believed God’s word and they were shown mercy.

Oh, and by the way, just in case you missed it -- Jonah believed God’s word, too. That’s why he ran so hard trying to get away from it. As he explained it to God: That is what I tried to forestall by running away. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity.

He “knew” this would happen. He “knew” this is who God is. But his anger was so strong that he decided the Ninevites didn’t deserve mercy and so he would be no help in getting mercy for them. He set his own judgement over God’s mercy.

Our country has a lot of people running about these days who claim to believe God’s word, but still refuse any thought of mercy to those they have, for whatever odd reasons, determined to be “the enemy.” They, like Jonah, place their own judgement over God’s. May our country soon find healing for this sad affliction.

Jonah believed. He just thought his own wisdom was better. He believed God’s words but he did not, apparently, trust that God had a right to make his own choices without consulting Jonah. That didn’t work out very well for Jonah, although even he received mercy at the end.

May we all be open to both offer and receive that same love and mercy.

0 Comments

FOLLOW YOU...WHERE?

1/24/2021

0 Comments

Mark 1:16-20
[this is a story about being called. We are all called at some point – perhaps multiple times to multiple callings. Some calls are incumbent on us all – feed the hungry, clothe the naked, seek justice, love kindness, protect the powerless – but others are very personal. This is a story of the personal kind -- the calling of some of the first disciples who would walk with Jesus.]

As Jesus walked beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will send you out to fish for people.” At once they left their nets and followed him. When he had gone a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John in a boat, preparing their nets. Without delay he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men and followed him.

Last week I wrote about John the Baptist and Jesus’ baptism by John. Immediately after this event, Jesus went up into the wilderness, alone, for 40 days to pray and face his temptations. Coming out of the wilderness, he heard that John had been imprisoned by Herod. At this time Jesus went straight into Galilee and began the preaching and teaching that would be the mission of his remaining days.

Every one of the four gospels has an account of Jesus calling those who would be his disciples. The particulars of these stories vary but the calling of those who would follow him is important enough that it occurs in all four accounts. Jesus issues an invitation, and the disciples respond.

The gospel accounts deal with an “in person” invitation from Jesus. For those of us today who find ourselves on this faith journey, our invitation was probably a little less obvious and direct. I know that, for myself, my calling was less a “come and go with me” than a shutting of doors until there was only one path left open.

My own calling into ministry was, at its beginning, more a stumbling accidently into something that I then found interesting and challenging. I was called to teach within a church setting. I certainly didn’t see it at the time as a “calling.” I never planned in advance to go that direction but once there I thought I would follow that line — and then I got so excited by it all that I built a plan.

It was a really good plan — a plan to do God’s work doing something I loved — teaching the teachers. I loved doing it; it was needed; I was good at it; and it was doing a good work – what could go wrong? Right. Until it all blew up in my face and I was left with nowhere to go. (You know what they say about God laughing when we think we have plans for our lives...)

I had been so enthusiastic for my plan that I had applied for and been accepted to seminary to further the education I needed for my grand plan. I had resigned my job and was packed up and ready to move when the blow-up hit.....and so I found myself at seminary ready to study for something that was no longer a viable path for my future.

I sort of tread water for a while – I enjoyed seminary even though I didn’t know what I was doing there now. I tried creating new plans that would work with my new situation ..... and then for a while it was nothing but a series of doors closing – every time I thought I had a plan, “slam” -- until there was literally nowhere to go but the one direction I had adamantly announced I would never go — local church ministry. And here I am, 23 years later.

Obviously, calls come in all different forms. I have clergy friends who were crystal clear from childhood as to what they were meant to do with their lives and others who came to their religious calling rather late in life. And yes, calls come for many things other than clergy service. There are numberless ways to help build the kingdom of God – to help build a peaceful, caring world for all peoples. There’s teaching, medicine, home-building, hospitality, running food banks, building water systems in areas denied clean water, fighting to protect the environment – just so many things, I could go on and on.

Whenever we read the “calling” scriptures, I sort of envy the first disciples for the simple clarity of their calls – Jesus says, come with me and they jump up and go. But at the same time I do wonder if Peter and Andrew, John and James, were just going along with their lives or if they, too, thought they had actual plans for themselves before Jesus wandered by that day.

Where were you going — what were your plans — before God stopped by one day and called you to be a servant, a church-goer, a believer— a follower of Jesus? And where has that call led you?

0 Comments

POINTING THE WAY

1/17/2021

0 Comments

Mark 1:4-6, 9-10
John the Baptizer appeared in the wild, preaching a baptism of life-change that leads to forgiveness of sins. People thronged to him from Judea and Jerusalem and, as they confessed their sins, were baptized by him in the Jordan River into a changed life ..... At this time, Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. The moment he came out of the water, he saw the sky split open and God’s Spirit, looking like a dove, come down on him.

In the midst of all the on-going drama in our world right now – with worsening COVID numbers and the political upheaval in our American society – I’ve chosen to take a week out and check in with where we are in the lectionary cycle – where we are in the life of Jesus’ world.

We hear a lot about John the Baptist at this time of year because once we are past the nativity stories, we always start the yearly cycle with the first story of Jesus’ adult life -- the story of his baptism. Whether it’s a long version or a short one, it is always where we start the story because it is where Jesus first appears on the public scene.

Unfortunately, what we hear about John is always in little snippets — depending on which gospel we’re reading, and we rarely get any cohesive narrative in a time-line order — just bits and pieces scattered here and there.

John’s story begins when his barren, elderly parents — Zechariah, a priest, and Elizabeth—miraculously turn up pregnant in their old age, accompanied by prophecies that the child to come will be “great in the sight of the Lord.” As it happens, Elizabeth has a young cousin named Mary, who five months later, also miraculously turns up pregnant (we all know this part of the story.) So Jesus and John are cousins.

Long before Jesus ever showed up on the public scene, John was out preaching a message of repentance and drawing crowds to come and be cleansed in baptism. He preached that the people needed to repent and be cleansed because the one they had awaited for so very long – the one whose sandals John claimed to be unworthy to unlace – that one was very near now.

One day, while John was baptizing, out at the Jordan River, Jesus showed up, virtually out of nowhere, since he had not yet begun to teach and no one really knew him. After some back-and-forth between them, John baptized Jesus. From this point, Jesus begins his public ministry, and John ends up in jail.

John was already in trouble with the authorities (that is, the Herodian family who were the local stand-ins for the Romans) for condemning the marriage of the second Herod to his brother’s divorced wife, Herodias, (while in Mosaic Law it would have been legal for Herod to marry his brother’s widow, had the brother died, it was not lawful for Herod – who was divorced himself – to marry his brother’s divorced wife.)

Herod and Herodias both hated John for calling them on this unlawful union, but Herod was afraid to act against John in case he really was sent by God. Unfortunately, Herod, being apparently, a dirty old man, also had an unnatural attraction to his young step-daughter, and she and her mother set him up to promise her anything she wanted — and she declared what she really wanted was John’s head on a platter. Hence, John in jail.

While this was going on Jesus began traveling all around and teaching and building himself a name as a teacher and healer. John, meanwhile, while in prison, sent some of his followers to go ask Jesus if he was that “one they have waited for” — that is, the Messiah. Jesus answers them, “Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised.....”

Not long after this, Herod finally gave in to family pressure and beheaded John, but John had received his answer. His calling had always been to prepare the way for the one who would come after him – not to be the star, himself -- and now he knew that one was here. His work was finished.

Three brief years later, Jesus would follow his cousin as another victim of death by the reigning authorities. These two cousins — one to prepare the way, one to be The Way — between them, changed the world to come.

And that is why John the Baptist is important for us to know about. The world always needs its true prophets – the ones who remind us to look ahead and prepare ourselves for what is to come.

0 Comments

ANGER THAT LEADS TO HEALING

1/10/2021

0 Comments

Matthew 23:27-28
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful, but inside they are full of the bones of the dead and of all kinds of filth. So you also on the outside look righteous to others, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.

Well -- that was a comforting message -- NOT.

I had another sermon half written for this week when I found myself involved in a Facebook tizzy by posting what I thought was simply a factual point, and ended up being accused of being a bad pastor. Now, the person who posted that has every right to their opinion — absolutely — and I’m not challenging that or seeking to “defend” myself. But the whole thing got me thinking about why we tend focus on certain of Jesus’ teachings while ignoring others.

We all of us, I suspect, from time to time, find ourselves falling into “gentle Jesus, meek and mild” thinking where we make him into a fluffy little bunny who would never say “boo” to anyone. This is too often the image we were taught as children.

I know — because some of you have spoken to me about it at different times over the years — that we can get confused when we feel what feels like righteous anger, legitimate anger -- but believe that we too, are supposed to be “meek and mild” and turn the other cheek. We get confused — and then we feel guilty.

I suspect the past couple of days may have brought some of this guilty confusion up for some of you because there certainly has been enough going on to make a person angry, so I looked up examples of Jesus being angry — and yes, there are plenty of them. Sometimes they show him saying and doing things I would never dream of doing.

Probably the first example everyone thinks of is Jesus driving the money changers out of the Temple — with a whip, no less. Overturning the tables, throwing money around, yelling at them to get out! This story is found in John, Matthew and Luke, and it's important to remember that when a story shows up in multiple gospel accounts it usually means we are supposed to hear and pay attention to it. And yes, Jesus is really, really angry—and, no, he is not turning the other cheek.

Then there’s the time Jesus wanted a fig, but the otherwise healthy tree had no figs on it right then (hardly the tree’s fault), so Jesus just killed the tree out of hand. There are numerous occasions scattered about that describe Jesus being challenged by the Scribes and Pharisees and looking and speaking as if he’d like to curse them all on the spot. He, of course didn't do that, but the stories make it clear he was really fed up.

But the prize-winner of them all, to my thinking, is the 23rd chapter of Matthew from which I took the brief bit for our reading today. Just read the entire chapter — it’s not that long. Six of its eight paragraphs start with “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!” He also calls them “blind fools,” “blind guides,” “lawless,” “murderers,” “whitewashed tombs,” and “brood of vipers!” again, not sweet-talking anyone.

Yes, Jesus got angry when anger was the proper response to wrong being done — but it matters first, that he was angry for good reason, and second, that he did not stay in his anger — his actions always lead to cleansing and healing. He didn’t just get angry for anger’s sake. He was not known anywhere in scripture as an angry person. His anger led, instead, to positive actions that helped others and honored God.

So, stop feeling guilty any time you get mad (unless, of course, it’s just rage to soothe our own egos, in which case we should be ashamed). It’s OK for Christians to be angry at wrongs being done. While Jesus’s occasional anger is certainly not blanket permission for us to lose our tempers and act badly, neither is it a reason for us to leap directly into forgiveness without reflecting and addressing the wrong that was done in our sight. Sometimes, anger is exactly the proper response—anger is what moves us to work to stop the wrong and strengthen the right. If we see wrong being done and our response is merely, "oh, well, Jesus loves them," when is anything ever going to get better?

So go ahead, get angry when there is valid reason for anger -- just don’t stop and stay there. Let that anger move you on into healing.

0 Comments

THE LIGHT SHINES

1/3/2021

0 Comments

John 1:1-5
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

On Wednesday, the 6th of January, we will celebrate the Feast of the Epiphany. Epiphany is a Greek word meaning “manifestation,” so the church celebration we call Epiphany is about the manifestation of God through Jesus. The most common reading used for today is that of the visit of the three Wise Men or Magi — a manifestation to other nations.

But the story of the Magi is not the only scripture reading assigned to this day – the one I’ve quoted from above, the prologue to John’s gospel, is also a common reading for Epiphany, because it, too, is about God’s manifestation through Jesus. While the other three gospels get a rotation through the lectionary readings John’s gospel is used only at special occasions so we don’t hear much from John, which is too bad because it has some of the most beautiful language in all the gospels, and the Jesus it describes is awe inspiring.

We’ve talked before about the fact that John’s gospel is different from the other three    gospels – and nowhere is it more different than in it’s image of who and what Jesus is. In the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus is indeed the Son of God, but above all else, Jesus is a man – a human person just like us. He is so much an ordinary human that it takes quite awhile in those gospels before anyone begins to see him as anything any different from any other man — special, maybe, but still a man.

The Jesus we meet in John’s gospel is, right from the very start, right from the opening words, Divine. One who chooses – for a while – to take on human flesh. For the author of John’s gospel, there is no hesitation. John’s gospel is the story of the Christ — God the Son. And it is the story of God revealing – manifesting – God’s self through the Christ, the Messiah, the Chosen One, God made flesh. This Jesus is the Light – the true Light that is in the world – and he is an enlightening light for all who will let it be such.

This is the meaning of John’s gospel and it’s revelation of Christ – It records a struggle    between those who will acknowledge Jesus as the revealer of God, and those who will not. This struggle goes on until the end of time. Where do you stand in this struggle? Are we content with the darkness, because it is at least a darkness we are familiar with? Or are we willing to stand in the Light, to walk in the Light, to act in the Light – and bring the Light to the world around us?

The light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness will not overcome it.
Thanks be to God.

0 Comments

BELIEVING OR TRUSTING

FOLLOW YOU...WHERE?

POINTING THE WAY

ANGER THAT LEADS TO HEALING

THE LIGHT SHINES

Rev. Cherie Marckx

Archives