Category Archives: Mark

There Is Love

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A Sermon for the Locust Grove United Church of Christ of Locust Grove, PA

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor © 2024

World Communion Sunday • 20th Sunday After Pentecost • October 6, 2024

Genesis 2:18-24 • Mark 10:2-16

I’d just moved to Boston to go to seminary, and I was excited and nervous. This was long before Starbucks and coffee house culture; we just had diners. So I went in one and asked for a coffee. The man said, “You want dat regulah?” Not wanting to look like I didn’t know what I was doing, I said, “Sure.” He gave me a cup of coffee with cream in it. I always drink my coffee black; so I said, “Oh I didn’t want cream,” and asked him to replace it with a black coffee. He said, “You asked foh regulah.” What I learned is that while black coffee is how it comes regularly in Michigan, in Boston, “regular coffee” is coffee with cream in it. Since then, I’ve had to deal with lots of similar misunderstandings. In Spain once, I thought I ordered olives—“olivdes”—but ended up with snails. England is especially hard because they use the same words for different things. We all know what a biscuit is, right? Except that in England it’s a cookie. Never order biscuits and gravy in England. I mention these differences because this morning in our gospel reading you heard the word ‘divorce’. Some of us are divorced; others have walked with friends or family through divorces. So when you heard that word, you probably thought you knew what it meant. But just like biscuits, just like olivdes, just like regular coffee, we need to be careful and not apply our own ideas to what Jesus is saying. Instead, let’s look at what this means for his time and his way so that we can hear what he’s really saying.

Let’s begin by remembering where we are in Mark’s story of Jesus. At his baptism, he heard a voice from heaven say, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” Just before this, he’s taken two disciples up a mountain and again, a heavenly voice has said, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!’ Twice already he has told his disciples that he’s going to be handed over to the authorities, killed, and will rise again after three days. They are now on the way to Jerusalem, where this will be fulfilled. Along the way, there are a series of confrontations where he’s asked to debate tricky questions of religious law. That’s what’s happening here. This is a political question: the most famous divorce there was when King Herod divorced his wife to marry his sister-in-law. It was preaching against this that got John the Baptist executed.

When we think of marriage and divorce, we think of two people dating, falling in love, having a ceremony that celebrates their unique commitment to a relationship of intimacy with each other. We know this hope doesn’t always blossom. Sometimes there are choices, sometimes there is abuse, sometimes it becomes clear to one or both that this relationship cannot continue. So we provide for either person to ask for a divorce, and we have a whole legal framework that tries to equitably divide up property and responsibilities for children. But Jewish custom was different in Jesus time. Marriage was less about intimacy than about a contract, called a ketubah. The ketubah specified a bride price and provided a property settlement. After the ketubah was signed, there was often a period of being engaged, up to seven years. Then a formal marriage ceremony would be held. Women could not ask for a divorce; only a man could initiate a divorce by filing what is called a get. Women and children were often abandoned after a divorce. There was no requirement for child support or property division. This is what’s being discussed here.

The Pharisees in the passage set out the law of Moses regarding divorce; it’s what I’ve just described. A man files a get, the divorce is finalized. All is according to the law of Moses. Perhaps Moses realized not all marriages work and provided an out. But that bit of grace has become a law. Jesus goes to the core of the matter. He wants to go behind Moses’ law and back to the original intention of God. He says that Moses wrote this law because of the hardness of hearts of people and reminds them of God’s hope at creation. 

We miss some of the significance of the story of creation in Genesis because of translation issues. What happens there is that God takes some mud from a creek, forms a human shaped doll, just as Jewish children did. These dolls were called adamanh; we translate this as a name, Adam, and use gendered language to make Adam male. But this isn’t a male, isn’t Adam, it’s an adamah.Then God breathes life into the adamah. In both Hebrew and Greek, the word for Spirit and breath is the same. So the adamah becomes a living being by God sharing spirit/breath. 

God says it isn’t good for the adamah to be alone and tries out all kinds of creatures as partners, but it’s only when God takes some of the substance of the adamah and makes another being that the adamah recognizes a true partner. The word is ‘aged’, which means helper but has the sense of equal. Sometimes God is described as our aged, our helper. It’s only when the two are together that they are described as man and woman, actually as husband and wife. The story concludes, “And the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed.” This part always make middle school confirmation classes giggle, but it’s really a sign of intimacy.

Sometimes this happens and it’s amazing and wonderful. We also know sometimes it doesn’t. This is true of much of life. God hopes we will live in covenants that express justice and loving kindness, that we will provide for everyone to live out the fulfillment of their gifts as children of God. We know that doesn’t happen as well. When we think of marriages breaking down, we often think of adultery, but it’s just as common for marriages to break down because the couple are not helpers to each other, not partners. So we provide in our common life, legal ways to say, “Look, I need out of this marriage. I need a divorce.” We provide a legal process for this. But what about the spiritual process?

Jesus has an answer for that as well. First, he refuses to endorse the abandonment of the vulnerable, of wives and children. Second, he picks up a child. We’ve seen him lift a child before; here he touches them, often a sign of healing. He says, “Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” What he seems to be signaling is that when adults have wandered off God’s path, the solution is to go back to being a child. He speaks in other places about being born from above; he invites us to become a new person. This is the key to moving beyond divorce: to reflect and repent, to see that if you have not lived up to God’s intention, you need to change and start again, like a child. The solution isn’t law: the solution is grace.. 

This text has been turned into law in a way that often hurts people. Jesus heals; Jesus hopes. He lifts up God’s hope that we will live in equal, intimate partnerships, in just covenants, and when we don’t, he summons us to repent and become like children. This is a hope meant for all people. Today is the tenth anniversary of the Supreme Court decision that finally recognized the right of LBGTQ people to publicly celebrate marriages partnerships. We should be proud the United Church of Christ has been and continues to be a leader in accepting and affirming this hope for all people. 

I come to this text as a person who has been divorced and remarried. I know what it means to take a hard look at yourself, to realize you need to change. There is a song that says, “It’s me, it’s me, it’s me, O Lord, standing in the need of prayer.” Sometimes what we should sing is, “It’s me, it’s me, it’s me O Lord, standing in the need of change, standing in the need of forgiveness, standing in the need of grace.

Jesus preaches this; Jesus is the embodiment of God’s love among us. And God’s hope is that just as we received the spirit at our creation, we will share it. We will heal and hope and in those partnerships, in our communities, there will be love.

In a few moments, we’re going to share together communion, the great memorial of grace. When we say, “This is his body, broken for you,” it reminds us that we are also broken. When we say, “This cup is the new covenant in his blood,” it reminds us that Jesus offers not law, but love. Peter, Paul and Mary sing a song about marriage and love. One of the verses says,

Oh the marriage of you here has caused him to remain
For whenever two or more of you are gathered in his name
There is love. there is love.

Amen. 

Action This Day

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A Sermon for the Locust Grove United Church of Christ of York, PA

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor

18th Sunday After Pentecost/B • September 22, 2024

Mark 9:30-37

Early in World War II, when the British army had been flung off the continent of Europe, defeated in the Far East and thrown back in the Mediterranean, it seemed to many that the best the nation could do against fascist powers in Germany and Italy and Japan was to retreat to its island fortress and lick its wounds, hoping for a negotiated peace. But Winston Churchill thundered publicly that they would never surrender. When he was given memos from his military staff about their inability to make progress, he had a habit of writing on the memos in his own bold handwriting, “Action this day!” Churchill knew that defeat was not simply surrender, it is also the conviction that nothing can be done. He never stopped insisting that things be done and if not all of them worked, so be it. Action this day!—nevertheless. Action this day—every day. Today’s reading from Mark is an action plan for disciples.

To see the story we read in Mark in context, we need to go back a bit. Once again the lectionary has skipped an important event. This time, it’s the transfiguration. Because Transfiguration has its own appointed Sunday, the lectionary assumes you already heard this story this year, sometimes last winter, just before Lent. To refresh, Jesus takes two disciples up a mountain with him and while they are there, they see Moses and Elijah appear and Jesus transfigured. What does ‘transfigure’ mean? Does it happen to you? It means here that he glows, and his clothing is suddenly bright white. Now this is a time before washing machines or bleach, so white clothes are startling. Jewish scripture is divided into three sections, Torah, Prophets, Writings; Elijah represents the prophets, Moses represents Torah. On the mountain, we read that “…a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!’ [Mark 9:7] Just as the signs of healing and exorcism point to Jesus as the Son of God, just as the blessing at his baptism did, once again, the disciples are being taught about the identity of Jesus. Peter’s answer to Jesus’ question, “Who do you say I am?”, that he is the Christ is being confirmed.

Now, I love a good story and I live with someone who loves them even more. I imagine if this happened today, there would be selfies and tweets and postings on Facebook. But when they come down from the mountain, Jesus tells the disciples not to tell anyone and amazingly they don’t. Instead, they encounter a crowd and get distracted. There’s a boy who is possessed; I’m guessing he is nine. Nine-year-old boys sometimes seem possessed; if you raised one, you know exactly what I mean. In any case, the surprising fact about this one is that the disciples have tried and failed to heal him. But Jesus takes him by the hand, heals him, and when the disciples ask later what they did wrong, simply says that the boy needed prayer.

That brings us up to the section we read today. Along the way, as they go through Galilee, Jesus again predicts his coming passion.

…he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, ‘The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again.’ [Mark 9:31]

But just like the first time, the disciples don’t understand. It’s hard to know whether they don’t get it or they just don’t want to believe it. Mark says they were afraid to ask him. It’s uncomfortable; we don’t like talking about it either. Think how many more people show up for Easter than Good Friday services. 

But at the end of the day, it’s Jesus asking the questions. “What were you discussing?” It was customary for disciples to walk behind the master, so perhaps he’d heard them arguing and like a parent ignoring squalling kids, he ignored it; maybe he just didn’t know. They tell him they were arguing about which one of them was the Number One Disciple—who was the greatest. This is so wild, it’s funny. Jesus tells them he’s going to be killed; they argue about their rank. He’s pointing, for the second time, to the end; they are assuming things are going to go on and get better. Jesus is going to be King!—they want to be his ministers, his subordinates, and they want to figure out right now who is first, who is third, who is eleventh. 

So Jesus does what he often does: he tells them the truth, and then he illustrates it. 

He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” Then he took a little child and put it among them, and taking it in his arms he said to them. “”Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.” [Mark 9:35ff]

Jesus is saying this in a social world that is very different from ours That culture had no middle class; it had rich, powerful people, slaves and people who were only a little better than slaves called peasants. Within the upper class, honor was very important and established by associating with other rich people, doing favors, and insulting those who were lower on the social status level. To say be a servant is to go against all of this: it overthrows every idea of the way to live they know. 

Then Jesus caps it by welcoming a child. Now as soon as I said ‘child’ I know you were thinking of little kids. Maybe you remember your own kids, maybe you’re thinking of grandkids. But child has a much bigger meaning in Jesus’ time. The word we translate ‘child’ is also used of slaves. And the people we call children are not beloved cute kids, they are seen as mostly worthless until they are old enough to work. Children aren’t respected, children are the least on the social scale. At another place where a child gets to Jesus, in fact, the disciples intervene because it’s not right for a child to be next to their leader. But Jesus embraces the child there as well as here.

In these two verses you have a capsule of the history of Christian churches. On the one hand, we are endlessly concerned about rank and priority. Some churches have different clergy ranks. I used to have a friend I teased because while my title is “Reverend”, his was “Most Reverend.” I asked him if there was an intermediate step of “More Reverend” I could get. We like hierarchies; we like to know our place among them. That’s what the disciples are doing. It’s Jesus, only Jesus, who is standing there saying, “Whoever wants to be first should be last.” It’s Jesus, only Jesus, who is saying no to all our hierarchies. 

Sometimes we listen to him. In the 1700s as England industrialized, some Christians were concerned about the children working in the new factories. They set up Sunday Schools where kids were taught reading and writing and also religion. The first one in England started in 1751. Richard Raikes was rich man who became a leader in the movement, and he helped bring it to America where it flourished. By 1785, 250,000 English children were attending Sunday Schools. As public schools took over the task of teaching basic skills, Sunday Schools became more focused on their religious mission. So sometimes we do what Jesus says; sometimes we do what we think best. How do we choose between the two? How do we stay on the way following Jesus? 

We stay on the way with Jesus when we listen to him. So I read this story of disciples who are scared by what Jesus has said; I read this story of disciples who don’t understand. And I know that I am one of them: I don’t understand either. I don’t understand suffering; I don’t understand a savior who goes to a cross. It’s too much; it makes no earthly sense. Of course, that is the point: it doesn’t make earthly sense. As Paul says, the wisdom of this world has been found wanting. He means me, he means my wisdom. Instead, I can only have faith in the wisdom of God. In that faith, when I look at this story, I see that Jesus has given us an action plan. He is going to Jerusalem to be handed over and killed—what should I do? What should we do? Simple: welcome children. 

That’s it: that’s his plan for us. That’s how we can know we are connecting to him because when we welcome children, we welcome him. When we welcome children, we are following him. Welcoming a child is welcoming the least among us. Young people, certainly, but also all those others who are seen as small. Finally, as we’ll see next week, children is what he calls us. And that is what we are: God’s beloved children. You are that child he is embracing. I am. All he asks is that we act like it: action this day! Action to embrace the least; action to make the love of God present in a concrete way. Action this day: action every day.

Amen.

Fear and Trembling

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Listen to the Sermon Preached Here

A Sermon for the Locust Grove United Church of Christ of York, PA

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor © 2024

16th Sunday After Pentecost • September 8, 2024

Isaiah 35:4-7a, Mark 7:24-37

Jesus is on vacation. Mark says he went up to Tyre, a big coastal town north of Israel, outside its borders. He enters a house and wants some privacy: “…[he] didn’t want anyone to know he was there.” [Mark 7:24b] You know how this works. You go to the shore, maybe Ocean City or Wildwood, rent an Airbnb, just want to be anonymous, kick back, rest up. After all, just before this he’s had a tough time. He got rejected in his hometown and couldn’t do anything there. His mentor and friend, John the Baptist, has been executed. He keeps having arguments with better educated clergy. Maybe his disciples have gotten annoying, the way family sometimes can. So off he goes.

A Woman Comes to Jesus

But when he gets there, it turns out he’s too well known to hide out. Some Canaanite woman, a Gentile, throws herself at his feet when he’s out looking for breakfast. Honestly, I’ve never had a woman throw herself at my feet, so I’m not sure quite what that’s like, but I have certainly been accosted when I’m getting away. It’s a little professional secret that clergy mostly learn early on never, ever, to admit they are clergy when traveling. Years ago when I was young and on a long flight and a woman next to me asked what I did. I proudly said I’m a minister. She spent the rest of the flight telling me why she didn’t go to church and how she didn’t believe in God. I really just wanted to nap, not talk theology. So I’m guessing that’s how Jesus felt. He’s off duty; maybe healing people is exhausting. He’s on a mission, after all, to reclaim Israel for God, to bring all Jews back to a purer, more passionate faith but these people aren’t his problem, they’re Gentiles.

Still, there’s this woman at his feet; no way around her. She’s begging for his attention, his compassion. Her daughter is possessed; she’s desperate. All parents know this feeling, that special, relentless, desperation when your child is sick and no one seems able to help. Jesus might be on vacation, but she doesn’t care, she only cares about helping her daughter. She looks ridiculous, lying there in the street, but she doesn’t care, she only cares about helping her daughter. He’s a man; she’s a woman, he’s a Jew, she’s a Gentile, but she doesn’t care, she only cares about helping her daughter. She lives in a culture that tells women to be quiet in public, never to talk to a strange man, but she doesn’t care, she only cares about helping her daughter.

Dogs!

I think Jesus must have tried to get around her but couldn’t, so he says something conventional, tries to get out of the situation. “He said to her, ‘Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.’” [Mark 7:27] Now we think of dogs as fun and cute, and we love them. But dogs in this time and place are dirty, mangy, they live outside in villages, they eat garbage and smell like it. ‘Dog’ is an insult; it’s like one of the many ethnic slurs we all know, no need for me to quote them.‘Dogs’ is what Jews call Gentiles and they typically ignore them. Jesus grew up as a Jew; Jesus is steeped in the culture, he’s human and like all humans, his culture has captured him. So he replies like a Jewish man to this Gentile woman. I’m sure he thought that would be the end of it. A little brusque language, a little insult, done, she’ll go away and leave him alone.

But she doesn’t; she only cares about her daughter, she doesn’t care about the insult. She turns it around: “Even the little dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs,” she says. There’s a little play on words there: she’s turned his insult from an image of the mangy alley dogs to a puppy playing in the home. It’s a good argument and it works. “For saying that, you may go,” he says, and assures her that her daughter is healed. She gets up , goes home and wow! Her daughter is fine, her daughter is back.

This isn’t a very nice picture of Jesus, is it? It isn’t gentle Jesus meek and mild; it isn’t the good shepherd, carrying the lost sheep home on his shoulder. It isn’t the love your neighbor guy we all expect. There are endless articles and commentary and sermons explains this away, trying to give us back the nice Jesus we think we know. Even the Gospel of Matthew, about 20 years after Mark, cleans the story up and makes it about her faith, not the argument. But I want the real Jesus, not the pretty picture someone else painted; I want to know the real Jesus, so I want to know what’s going on here. And what seems to be going on is that Jesus changed his mind. 

Is Jesus Changing?

“Wait, Jesus changed his mind? Isn’t he perfect?” I imagine someone wondering this. We believe Jesus is fully human and isn’t being fully human sometimes being wrong? Jesus thought of his mission as being for the Jews, for God’s people. I think Mark is giving us a peek into the moment when Jesus changes his mind and realizes God’s plan is bigger, more wonderful, than he had realized. We’re getting a look at a moment when Jesus realizes everyone is welcome at his table, everyone is included, everyone is a child of God. Everyone includes a Gentile woman with a sick daughter. She isn’t a dog, she isn’t just a woman, she isn’t just a Gentile, she’s a child of God, just like him, and God loves her, just like him. 

It isn’t easy to admit you’re wrong and change. May and I like to argue, Jacquelyn likes everything peaceful. So when we became a family, Jacquelyn introduced a rule that we call the dance. It works like this: if you argue a point, and you are proven wrong, you have to turn around to the left three times and say, “I was wrong, I was wrong, I was wrong”, and then to the right three times and say, “You were right, you were right, you were right.” By the end everyone is laughing; peace is restored. We remember that how much we love each other is more important than being right. 

What I love about Jesus in this passage is that he was wrong and could change. Mark makes it clear; it’s what the woman says that changes his mind. The passage asks us too: can we change? Can we listen to our history and our values and change our minds, change our hearts? I think this is something all too rare today. We all moan about the dark divisiveness of our politics, but isn’t it precisely because we don’t listen that we are divided? I wish we could make our politicians abide by the dance rule. I’d love to see some of those guys, instead of defending the indefensible, simply turn and turn and turn and say I was wrong, I was wrong, I was wrong. 

Acting on the New Reality

The rest of this passage makes it clear Jesus is acting on this new understanding. It says he goes by way of Sidon to the Deacpolis. This makes no sense; it’s like saying I went from Harrisburg to York by way of Philadelphia. But geography is theology in the Bible. What Mark seems to want us to know is that Jesus works among Gentiles as well as Jews. The Decapolis is a largely Jewish area. When Jesus arrives, we’re told that some friends brought a man who was deaf and stammered for healing. He takes the man aside and heals him in an astonishingly intimate way, touching his ears, telling them to be opened, wetting his finger on his own tongue, touching the man’s tongue. “Be opened!”, is the command: Ephphatha!

We’re starting a new year of programs and worship here, in a new time. Don’t we need to hear Jesus saying Ephphatha to us? There are some great things here that come from our values. One thing I’ve learned in the last few months is that this church is really great at appreciating. I love that we applaud the music; I love the positive energy of how people seem to appreciate each other here. How can we carry that forward? And what do we need to leave behind? 

Fear and Trembling to Joy

When Paul writes to a new Christian church in northern Greece, in the letter to the Philippians, he tells them to work out their salvation with fear and trembling. I think what he means is for them to discover that everything they think needs to be tested, evaluated, considered. I think he means they need to listen to Jesus, not just their own common sense. I think he knows that isn’t easy because it’s scary to change. I think he means to assure them that God is with them in the process. 

The same is true here. At the end of this story, Jesus is on his way home. Along the way, he heals a man who is deaf. Isn’t this all of us? Aren’t we sometimes deaf when God is practically shouting at us? It’s a fulfillment of what Isaiah said: 

Say to those who are of a fearful heart, “Be strong, do not fear! Here is your God. …then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be opened; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.[ Isaiah 35:4-7a]

Jesus goes on from here with a new understanding. He knows change is difficult; he knows we we have fearful hearts. Yet he says, over and over, “Let those who have ears to hear, hear.” May we hear him; may we follow him, no matter how it changes us. May we learn the love of God so that our fear and trembling turns into songs of joy.

Amen

Leaping Love

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A Sermon for the Locust Grove United Church of Christ of York, PA

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor © 2024

15th Sunday After Pentecost/B • September 1, 2024 (Labor Day)

Song of Solomon 2:8-13, Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

Listen to the sermon here

Happy Labor Day! You probably already have ways to celebrate this holiday but do you know its history? At the end of the 1800s, American labor conditions were grim and there was a rising tide of anger at the injustice. In 1894, that anger found expression in a march on September 5, 1882, by 10,000 workers through New York City who took the day off and marched to show their strength. Soon the custom spread and by 1894, Labor Day became a federal holiday. But that only affected federal workers; it took decades for the unions to win the right to the holiday in other industries. So today, along with barbecues and family gatherings, we ought also to remember that this holiday has its roots in the longing for justice of all people.

God Loves Holidays

Holidays have a special place in God’s plan. Literally in the beginning, at creation, God rests and that creates the sabbath, in Hebrew, Shabbat. In Exodus 23:9-12, God commands rest on the seventh day, not only for God’s people but also for undocumented people living among them, for slaves, even for animals. That theme of seven is extended in what is called the “Jubilee Year”, God’s command that debts be canceled every seven years. Also, it’s extended in the seven great festivals of God’s people: Passover, First Fruits, Pentecost, Day of Trumpets or Rosh Hashanah, Day of Atonement or Yom Kippur and Tabernacles. Every one of these festivals has a set of customs that make it special. At Passover, we are encouraged to remember God saving God’s people out of slavery in Egypt; at Tabernacles, God’s people are told to build a booth with a roof open to the sky and to spend time there, remembering the greatness of God in creation. Every one of these festivals is meant to bring us to a passionate appreciation of the presence of God.

We see that passion in the reading today from the Song of Solomon. The song is a love story and a lot of preachers over the years make it into an allegory of Israel and God. But I think it’s more of a metaphor, a way of saying “Look, this is what being with God is like: it’s like being in love.” The section we read today imagines a girl watching her boyfriend approach. He’s leaping over things to get to her; nothing is going to stand in his way. And when he gets there, he begs her to come away, because, he says, “…the time of singing has come…” The whole Song of Solomon is a duet, and in other parts we hear of his passionate love for her. Why is it like to love God? The Song tells us: “It’s like the first time you were in love.”

Turning Passion Into Routine

The trouble is we have an immense ability to turn this feeling into something routine and boring. In 1904, Virginia Cary Hudson wrote was 10 and wrote this view of church. 

Before I go into the house of the Lord with praise and thanksgiving, I lift up mine eyes unto the town clock…to see if I am late. It is not etiquette to be late.

Do not hop, skip, jump or slide in the church vestibule. Tip. Tip all the way to your seat. Be sure and do not sit in other people’s pews Jesus wouldn’t care but other people would. Paying money makes it yours to sit in…. Never punch people in church, or giggle or cross your legs. Crossing your legs is as bad as scratching or walking pin front of people or chewing gum…

[Hudson, O Ye Jigs and Tulips, p. 6f]

We have made worship something that proceeds in an orderly, careful manner and rarely offends people.

This is at the heart of what we read this morning from the Gospel of Mark. Jewish religion revolved at Jesus’ time revolved around a set of practices that governed the most basic bits of life like eating and drinking. The rules were meant to remind you that God was involved in every moment, the rules were meant to keep you looking up to God every day. There were rules for Shabbat, there were rules for food, there were rules for everything. The rules began as practices that helped people keep God’s covenant but over time, they became a burden for many.

In this chapter of Mark, the issue is handwashing. Now, we’ve all come through the pandemic, we all had those lessons, those endless lessons, on how important washing your hands is, how to do it, how long to do it. But this washing isn’t so much about germs and cleanliness as about being pure before God. Many Jewish rituals involved symbolic washing with water. We’ve taken one over, and we call it baptism. This handwashing is a kind of every day, every time you eat, baptism. It’s not even actually washing your hands; it’s enough to pour a little water over your fist.

A group of Pharisees have come to see Jesus. This isn’t the first time; you might remember earlier this summer a group of Pharisees argued with him because his disciples were eating on the sabbath. The Pharisees are often looked down on by Christians, but the truth is, they were trying to bring people back to a daily faithful observance of God’s covenant. But here are these followers of Jesus, eating without doing the ritual handwashing. They should be setting a good example, right? So Jesus: what about this? What about the “tradition of the elders” which is to say the customs of how God is worshiped.

Jesus’ response is pointed. He says they’re just paying lip service to God. They quote the tradition of the elders; he says that they are “…teaching human precepts as doctrines.” And then he goes on to list all kinds of bad things summed up by the phrase “evil intentions”. What he seems to be talking about is what Buddhists call desire. In our culture, we almost equate sin with sexual immorality so it’s interesting that in Jesus’ list of theft, murder, avarice, envy, slander and pride all occupy equal places. What keeps us from God isn’t whether we perform some ritual or another, it’s that we do it for ourselves rather than as a way to watch for God.

The Meaning of Worship

For that’s what worship is really meant to be: watching for God, hoping God will appear, hoping we will feel God’s presence. It’s not guaranteed, and it doesn’t always happen. We’ve all sat through boring church services; I know I’ve conducted my share. Part of the problem is that we want to be comfortable. And we’re most comfortable when we know what’s going on, when we know what to do. Like Virginia said, there is etiquette and every church has its set of customs. 

We’re in transition here. We know where we’ve been. I love the story of the day people of this congregation left the little wood church just a few yards from here, carrying books, and I’m sure other things, marching into this building, ready to carry on. They were making a transition and have been hard for some. The pews were different, the walls were different, the place was different. What if they had said, “No, we’re not going.”? We have a great history as a church and that march symbolizes it all, that carrying things forward to a new place and a new time. Hebrews calls those in our past, “the cloud of witnesses” and we should honor those witnesses. Our congregation is not just those here today, it’s that cloud of witnesses whose gift to us is this church. 

But there’s another crowd we should honor and remember too and that’s all those who aren’t here yet: the future congregation of this church. What will they look like? Who will they be? What will they need? We are a church in transition but in reality, all churches are in transition and always have been. Forty years or so after the days Mark is writing about, the church faced its first great conflict precisely over rituals that had to do with eating and whether all Christians would keep kosher. Surely this story is here in Mark because it helped them see how to go forward. 

I started with Labor Day for a reason. Labor Day honors workers: all those who produce everything we need, everything we use. What is our work as followers of Jesus? What is our work as God’s people? What is our work as members of this church? Surely it is to share the love of God; surely it is to refuse to let our desire for comfort get in the way of sharing the joy of God’s presence. So today, close with a quote from Anne Sexton’s poem, “Welcome, Morning”.

So while I think of it,
let me paint a thank-you on my palm
for this God, this laughter of the morning,
lest it go unspoken.

The Joy that isn’t shared, I’ve heard,
dies young.” ― Anne Sexton

Amen

So Much, So Little

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A Sermon for the Locust Grove United Church of Christ York, PA

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor © 2024

Eighth Sunday After Pentecost/B • July 14, 2024

Mark 6:14-29

Who is Jesus? That’s the question that ties together the bits of Mark’s Gospel we’ve been reading this summer. We read these like a serial, as individual episodes, but together they are meant to form a longer story and to invite us into that story. Let’s remember where we were at the end of last week’s reading: Jesus, after being rejected at Nazareth, sends out his 12 disciples with specific instructions. Next Sunday, we’re going to read about their return and how the crowds gather, hoping to find healing with him. Last week we heard Jesus’ neighbors ask, “Who is this that teaches with authority?” Next week, he tries to go off privately with the disciples but people who’ve never met him recognize him and gather around him. Who is this Jesus? He heals, but he also does something unique: he authorizes others to heal, he creates a community of healing and hope.

The Story So Far

So let me start today by going back to last week’s reading and picking up one of the threads: the sending out of the disciples. He sends them out in pairs; no one goes alone. He tells them to pack light. I think I’m a pretty good packer and I pride myself on traveling light. On our last trip, I needed clothes for about 10 days, toiletries, chargers for my earphones, phone and iPad, special converters to let me use Spanish plugs, a jacket, a tie in case we went out fancy, a couple of pairs of shoes. I take a bottle of water and toss in some snacks for the airplane ride.      It took a suitcase and a backpack to hold it. But listen again to Jesus’ instructions. 

He ordered them to take nothing for their journey except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts; but to wear sandals and not to put on two tunics.

Wow! Now that’s traveling light. The staff is a walking stick and tool and in a pinch a defense against wild animals. But they have no airplane snacks. They don’t have any money, no bag, not even a clean shirt.

You see what he’s done? Many of the disciples come from prosperous families; they own boats, they own nets, they fish, one is a tax collector, which means he’s kind of an accountant. But he’s making them weak; he’s making them vulnerable. When they get hungry, they can’t stop at McDonald’s; they have to ask for food. When they get cold, they can’t just get a hotel room; they have to ask for hospitality. He strips them of everything but the clothes on their back, the sandals on their feet and a staff and says, “Ok, now go share the good news.”  

Next he gives them instructions for dealing with people they meet. They’re going to have to find places to stay and when they do, he wants them to appreciate that place. So no hoping they get a better offer! And he gives the best advice ever for dealing with those moments when someone turns them down, or they fail: “dust off your feet.” As a pastor of churches, I’ve seen so many people offer ideas, only to have them shut down by someone who says, “Oh, we tried that; it didn’t work.” That person never dusted off their feet. They are still carrying the dust of that failure, and they can’t see this is a new time, new people.

So that’s where we were last week. Jesus had sent these people out and what’s coming next week is the return of these disciples. They’re going to come back and tell Jesus everything they’ve been doing and there going to be a great gathering of people who need Jesus and the disciples to heal them. That’s where we’re going.

Today’s Reading: John and Herod

So we know where we’ve been, we know where we’re going. How does this week’s reading fit It starts with the same question, “Who is Jesus?” We’re given a list of the possibilities: Elijah, the prophet it was thought would return some day, a prophet like the old ones or John the Baptist, returned from the dead. Wait a minute: what’s this about John? Remember John the Baptist? He was a preacher who was baptizing people at the Jordan, including Jesus. Just like Jesus, John gathered a following proclaiming the Kingdom of God was near. Just like Jesus, he made the authorities nervous. He made some real enemies at Herod’s palace because Herod got himself into a twisted situation. He divorced his wife, the daughter of another king, which causes a small war. Then he takes his brother’s wife as his. John has been preaching that this is wrong, that it’s sinful, and that rulers who commit adultery and sin before God shouldn’t be obeyed. That got him arrested; that will pretty much get you arrested in any time.

Now I’ve wrestled all week with how much about to say about Herod and this court. Herod was not supposed to be king; he had to out conspire four older brothers and his father to get there, probably getting some of them murdered along the way. He’s king because the Romans made him king and the Romans made him king so he’d keep taxes flowing to them. He’s doing that and using his share to build a whole new city up near Galilee called Tiberius, where almost as an afterthought, he’s throwing small farmers off the land. As to the court, I’m going to assume we’ve all seen enough of some version of “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” to let our imaginations supply the details. You can bet everyone there has more than two tunics, most have a closet full. They have money in their belt, they not only have a bag, they have a set with designer labels. They’re not worrying about hospitality, they’re worrying about how to get ahead of whoever is just above them. 

The social life of these people is parties, where they can snipe at each other behind their backs, eat, plot, make deals. At one of these parties, Herod’s step-daughter does an amazing dance and Herod’s so pleased—or so drunk—he tells her he’ll give her anything she wants. She’s a smart girl; Mark calls her Herodias, but her name is really Salome. She asks her mom what she should ask for. Now remember, her mom is Herod’s former sister-in-law who’s now become his wife; she’s the one John the Baptist was complaining about. So she tells Salome, ask for John’s head on a platter; the girl goes back, asks for that, and Herod decides to give it to her.

 What’s interesting is how Herod responds. Marks says, “The king was deeply grieved; yet out of regard for his oaths and for the guests, he did not want to refuse her.” Think what that means. Herod respects John. We’ve already been told, 

Herod feared John, knowing that he was a righteous and holy man, and he protected him. When he heard him, he was greatly perplexed; and yet he liked to listen to him.

John is Herod’s conscience. But Herod has other worries: he needs to look strong. He isn’t really; he’s only as strong as people think he is. They need to know he means business, so he has John executed, to prove how tough he is, how strong, how much in charge. The story ends, “When his disciples heard about it, they came and took his body, and laid it in a tomb.” We’re going to hear much the same thing after Jesus is crucified.

Who Is Jesus?

Who is Jesus? When he is crucified, there’s a sign over him that says, “King of the Jews”. The people that crucify him can’t think bigger than someone like Herod. They think having so much means greatness. But even on a cross, Jesus embodies a kind of glory kings don’t understand. There, it’s the power of a king condemning him; there, it’s the power of the love of God forgiving them. Herod eventually loses out in a power struggle and ends up exiled in the south of France. His life becomes so little. Jesus rises from the dead and gives hope for centuries, to us today; his life means so much. 

Who is Jesus? I was struck by a post on Facebook recently that said,

We want the war horse – Jesus rides a donkey.

We want the eagle – The Holy Spirit descends as a dove.

We want to take up swords – Jesus takes up a cross.

We want the roaring lion – God comes as a slaughtered lamb.

We keep trying to arm God = God keeps trying to disarm us.

Herod the king is in his palace. He has so much, but he’s afraid, so he kills a righteous man. 

Jesus is in a village. He has so little, but he’s so confident of the power of God, he sends out his followers without a change of clothes.

Who is Jesus?

Who is Herod?

Which one are you following? 

Amen.

Falling Forward

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A Sermon for the Locust Grove United Church of Christ, Locust Grove, PA

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor ©2024

Seventh Sunday After Pentecost/B • July 7, 2024

Mark 6:1-13

Jacquelyn and I like to travel to Spain. One of the benefits of her being a flight attendant is that we can fly inexpensively, so once a year we pick out a new place and pre-see it. What I mean is, Jacquelyn watches travel videos about the place, I look at suggested things to see. We get a sense of what it’s like to walk around before we ever set foot in the place. I mention all this because we’ve been reading through the first chapters of Mark’s Gospel, and that’s what he’s doing: giving us a tour, a preview, of what it looks like to walk with Jesus. So far, we’ve been to Capernaum, which is a bit like going from York to Harrisburg, we’ve been across Lake Galilee to an area that’s mostly Gentile and back again. We’ve seen him attract crowds, heal people in amazing ways, we’ve been amazed as he stilled a storm, so amazed we had to ask, with his friends, “Who is this?” Now he’s come home; now he’s back in Nazareth, where everyone knows him and his family lives. What can we learn about our life following him from this moment?

I wonder what it’s like for him to go home. Is he tired after his trip? Your mother is always glad to see you, so there’s that. It turns out he has a big family: four brothers, some sisters. Are some of them married with little kids running around? Moms always have some special thing they make for returning sons; my mother’s was coconut cream pie. The story says on the sabbath, he gets up and preaches at the synagogue. That was hard, I’m sure. I’ll let you in on a little preacher secret: it’s a lot easier to preach to a crowd of strangers than a little group who know you. I remember my first sermon at my home church. I was just 18 and they all knew me, I’d been leading the youth group and speaking in worship for years. They were proud to have one of their own going into the ministry. Everyone was very nice afterward but I heard someone say to my mother, “You must be so proud of Jim”, to which my mother replied more or less, “Well yes but you know it’s hard to listen to someone preach when you remember changing his diapers.”

So Jesus preaches in the synagogue; this is actually the last time in Mark we hear about him in a synagogue. It’s not clear what sort of reaction he gets. “Where did this man get all this?” Commentaries are divided on whether we should read this as praise or sarcasm. I think the latter and I think that because of what follows. Remember where we’ve been with Jesus: to the neighborhood, where he healed a man with a withered hand, though a storm he stilled, across the lake to Gersa, where he exorcised demons, to Capernaum where a woman was healed by just touching his clothes, and where he raised a little girl who had been thought dead. One amazing moment after another, but here at home, it says simply, “He could do no deed of power there…” Jesus is amazing until he gets home, where he fails. Right there, in front of the home town crowd, in front of all those family members, all those people he grew up with: nothing, fails, can’t do anything.

I know what that feels like. I worked in a growing church during seminary and when I graduated, I went out to a little Congregational church in Seattle that said they wanted to grow. There were about 25 of us most Sundays, a group that had split off from a large church downtown and bought a small building in the northern suburbs. I knew what to do; I’d read all the books on how to grow a church, I had the technique down. It took me a year but I convinced the church we should go out and call on people in the neighborhood. Now our neighborhood was a strange mix of everyone from single moms to retired folks to up-and-coming workers. I was sure this would work. It took hours and hours of planning, we printed up a really nice brochure, rehearsed what to say and finally off we all went one day. Our little group made about a hundred visits. I had calculated that we should expect to get a ten percent return, so figuring some of the visits would produce whole families, we got ready for 20 or 30 new people. We made sure there was extra food for coffee hour and waited. Nothing happened. No one came: not one visitor showed up on Sunday. The only immediate result was that some woman called me during the week and asked if we could help take care of her mother. It was a total failure. I was depressed for months. 

Jesus fails; we all fail. Are we failing as a church? Are we failing as churches? Last year, about 4,500 Protestant churches closed in the US. I could go on and cite statistics about church attendance and other measures, but that would just be even more depressing. What can we take from Jesus’ failure? What does he do? What Jesus does is keep teaching. “He was amazed at their unbelief. Then he went about the villages teaching.” The other thing he does is send out the twelve in pairs. He gives them authority, he gives them directions. I’ll say more about that next week but for now, notice that what Jesus does about failure is to expand his ministry by sending out six pairs of healers. Notice when he sends them. It’s not after a mighty work; it’s when he fails. Jesus fails but he fails forward because of his faith in God.

That doesn’t look like failure, does it? Maybe the problem is our definition of success and failure. In Seattle, our definition of success was a lot more people sitting in pews. That didn’t happen. What did happen, though, was smaller and harder to track. The people in that church didn’t come from the neighborhood and had never cared much about it. But after some time walking around there, meeting people, they started to care. We changed some rules about membership; we learned to be grateful and welcoming when someone did show up and a few of those people stuck. We had a small choir you had to audition to join; we got rid of the audition and just let anyone sing, including a woman who couldn’t read a note of music but had a beautiful voice. The church building was next to an elementary school. We had discovered there were a lot of single parent families and after talking to the school social worker, we discovered there were a lot of kids who went home to empty houses, so we created the first latch key program in Seattle, an after school program where volunteers helped kids do homework, played games and fed them a snack. 

I’d love to say that the church took off and grew into a big, strong place, but it didn’t. When I left a couple of years later, it was still small, but it was a different place. It was a congregation where people were busy with various ways of helping in that neighborhood. At the end of this story in Mark, no deeds of power have been done. Except this one: those twelve guys who have just been following Jesus around are now off, practicing what Jesus preached. Is that success? What do you think? What is success following Jesus? Is it looking rich and powerful, or listening to him and doing what he says? This is what he says: ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.’  [Mark 1:15]. Every day,, we hear bad news: Jesus says, “Believe in the good news.” This is the good news: you are a child of God; so is everyone you meet. Living in the kingdom means acting like it. So does living in the neighborhood. Amen.

Touched

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A Sermon for the Locust Grove United Church of Christ, Locust Grove, PA

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor © 2024

Sixth Sunday After Pentecost/B • June 30, 2024

Mark 5:21-43

We’ve just heard two stories about healings, and it’s tempting to just say, “Oh, that’s great, everything worked out.” But to really understand these stories, we’ve got to dig a little deeper and understand something about what’s called ritual purity in Jesus’ time. Let me explain it with a a story I heard this week about growing up in Appalachia on a farm. Sunday mornings, the storyteller and his four brothers all had a bath before church. Now keeping four boys clean while you wash the fifth had to be a chore, and his mother’s solution was to have all have them one by one as they got clean go sit on the couch. Ritual purity rules had to do with getting and staying clean in a way that made physical things an emblem of spiritual ones. These stories we read from Mark have a background we may not be aware of but would’ve been immediately obvious to any of the early Christians, all of whom were Jews. These aren’t just stories about healing—they’re also pictures of how Jesus dealt with those ritual purity rules. Those rules excluded many, many people. So let’s see how Jesus deals with these rules and these people and see what we can learn about how our lives as well.

Last week talked about Jesus crossing over to the gentile side of the Lake Galilee and this week we find him back on the Jewish side. For whatever reason, the lectionary has left out the story this year about what happened over there, but what happened is that he was casting out demons. 

Now he’s back and as he comes into town, there’s a crowd of people. Someone comes up, falls on their knees and begs Jesus to come to Jairus’ house, a leader in the synagogue. His daughter is ill, and Jesus is a well-known healer. So, Jesus and his disciples are pushing through the crowd when suddenly he stops. Have you ever done this, stopped in a crowd that’s moving? There must’ve been a bunch of them bumping into him. He turns to Peter and John and James and Andrew and says someone touched me. I think they must have rolled their eyes: they say, 5″You see the crowd pressing in on you; how can you say, ‘Who touched me?'”

But this wasn’t just someone bumping into him. A woman who has had a hemorrhage, we’re told, for 12 years has touched his clothing. Can you imagine her? Can you feel her desperation.? Surely she had been to healers; surely she had tried everything. If it was today, she would have gone on the web, searched for a cure. There’s another underlying piece here, too. In this time, her hemorrhage made her ritually unsure. Anyone who touched her, especially a man, would become impure as well. Perhaps that’s why she doesn’t just ask Jesus. Can you see her in the crowd? I think of her as an older woman, determined, brave. Now she’s moving through the crowd, now she’s closer to this Jesus, now she reaches out her hand and touches his cloak. And the story says she is healed. Imagine her shock; imagine her surprise. 

Then Jesus wheels around. “Someone touched me.” Was she afraid? Would he take it back, could he take it back? You know, in my family, when someone said that someone had done something, especially if it was my mom or dad, my brothers and I always had one response: “It wasn’t me!” The crowd seems to be doing that: they pull back, leaving her alone, on her knees. What do you think? The story says she was fell down before him in fear and trembling. But he doesn’t take it back; he tells her to go be healed. Perhaps you heard this and thought, “What? I thought she was already healed!” The healing he means is actually like a hospital discharge; it’s a certification that she’s now pure again, it’s the gateway back to her friends and family. There’s detail here you might have mixed. So far in this story, the woman is nameless; she’s just a woman with a disease. But when Jesus talks to her, he calls her daughter. Instead of her making him impure, he’s made her pure again, part of the family. This is what Jesus does. This is what Jesus’ touch does. It heals and brings us into the family. 

Touch is a switchy thing, isn’t it? My dad was a snuggler when I was little. Those were the days of one TV in the house. He’d lie on the floor in front of it, my brother and I on either side. But when I grew up, we had a hard time touching. I didn’t see him often and when I did, we didn’t know what to do. Shaking hands didn’t seem to be enough; hugging was not in our playbook. My mother used to laugh at us, she said we were like two bears, trying not to get too close. Of course, we’ve all been through the COVID pandemic when touch was dangerous. We didn’t worry before that. In most of my pastorates, I went to the back after the benediction and everyone shook my hand. Suddenly, we couldn’t do that. Suddenly, I couldn’t touch someone in a hospital bed. We learned the fist bump. Our family says grace before dinner; we used to hold hands, but now we don’t quite know what to do: some nights it’s holding on, some nights it’s bumps.

This story goes on to Jairus’ house. People tell Jesus not to bother; the girl is too far gone, but when he gets there, he touches her and tells her to get up. This is important: touching a corpse will definitely make you impure under the rules. But Jesus never hesitates; he says that she’s sleeping and goes right on. 

Think of what that home must have been like: people weeping, people trying to hold it together, people at the end of their rope. The text says there was a commotion. There would have been food; someone always brings food. No one wants to eat, but the food is there. Jesus goes to the girl, never hesitates, touches her, and says, “Talitha cumi.” That’s an Aramaic phrase; Aramaic was the common spoken language of the time. It’s often translated, “Little girl, get up”, but that doesn’t really convey the meaning. ‘Talitha’ is a term of endearment; ‘cumi’ means get up or come on. So it’s more like saying, “Come on, sweetie”. And she does; he says, “Give her something to eat,” which might have been to show she wasn’t a ghost. Personally? I think he just thought she needed a snack. It’s also a way of saying, “You’re back to being part of the family.”

This is what Jesus does: he touches people and brings them back to life in their community. He never seems to worry about ritual purity; he never seems to pay attention to the rules of ritual purity. What seems to happen is that instead of the impurity flowing to Jesus, his purity, his love, makes people pure and heals them. The gospels have at least nine stories of healing and several summary statements where he heals everyone brought to him. All have in common Jesus touching someone and healing them. Most of the time, he sends them back to families, to communities, to their lives. It isn’t just about physical touch, either; there are people he touches by casting out their demons, people he touches with parables, people he touches by feeding them.

Now, this is a time for this church to think about its mission in the next chapter. Where do we want to go? What do we want to see happen? Every church I’ve ever served generally said, “We want to grow” but that’s not what Jesus does. Over and over in Mark, the big crowd is in the way; sometimes it’s hostile. The crowd is not the goal. What Jesus does is touch people and give them back heir lives. So if we’re going to walk with Jesus, if we’re going to live as disciples of Jesus, we’re going to have to figure out how to touch people like Jesus did, with the love of God, the love that heals souls.

I took a class on being an Interim Pastor a while back. One of the things the teacher said is that pastors are supposed to provide answers, but interim pastors are supposed to ask questions. So today, I want to leave you with some questions. How can this church touch people with the love and grace of Jesus Christ? How can we make sure our traditions aren’t barriers for others? How can we, like Jesus, leave people sure they are spotless before God, ready to share their God given gifts in loving ways?

Amen.

The Farthest Shore

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A Sermon for the Locust Grove United Church of Christ, Locust Grove, PA

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor © 2024

Fifth Sunday After Pentecost/B • June 23, 2024

Mark 4:35-41

“Let us go across to the other side.” That’s how this story begins. Remember where we are: Jesus’ home territory, Galilee, up in the north, next to the Sea of Galilee. Remember where we were last week with him: the crowds pressing so tight, he and his disciples couldn’t even eat. “Let’s get out of here,” he seems to be saying—and also—he’s always pressing onward, forward. Peter and Andrew have a boat, James and John are sailors too, so the easiest way out is to get in the boat, sail off. 

Remember how I keep saying that everything in Mark happens immediately? It’s the same here. You know, when I go somewhere, I have to get my phone, maybe pack up my computer and a couple cords and chargers, find my keys, get my hat, find where I parked the car. If May and Jacquelyn are coming along, I need to wait for them to change outfits, get a purse, fix their hair, get a treat for the dog to distract her while we go out the door. It’s a process; is it that way for you? One of the commentators I read this week said the line that says, “They took him just as he was” is a mystery. It isn’t to me; it means, they didn’t wait to fix up, find keys, get phones, they just piled in the boat and left.

It’s an open boat. A few years ago, someone found a Galilee fishing boat from the same period, so we think we know what it might have been like. It would have been stinky: it’s a fishing boat, after all, and fishing boats have a certain aroma. It would have been a little leaky; wooden work boats tend to let a bit of water in through the seams, so there’s always a puddle in the bottom. These boats were rowed so, you can imagine the disciples shifting out the oars; some know what to do, some don’t. They had a short mast they could rig up and a sail, so perhaps they did that. Not all of them are sailors, so I’m guessing some were nervous. Some were in their element. They cast off and set out for the far shore.

It’s about seven miles across the Sea of Galilee, maybe two hours or just a little more. They’re setting out at evening, which is often calm. Jesus is exhausted, and who knows? Maybe a little seasick? The first thing that happens when you get seasick is being drowsy. In any event, he falls asleep. Have you got this pictured? A little open sailboat, raggedy sail catching the wind, bunch of guys sitting around, Jesus asleep, someone steering, someone keeping watch in the bow. That’s when the storm hits. 

I wince every time I read this story because I know just what that feels like. One moment you’re sailing along peacefully, the sails trimmed, the boat burbling along, the pressure on the tiller just enough to hold it steady. Suddenly there’s a bang, suddenly the boat tips, suddenly someone’s shouting to get the sail down, suddenly there’s water coming over the side. Now, my boat is a keel boat, which means it’s going to come back up. My boat has a cabin and a deck, and the water will run off. But this boat, this Galilee fishing boat, is an open boat: no deck, no cabin, no keel. It’s a bit crowded, not everyone there is a sailor, and they must have been bailing furiously, and yelling, and finally they wake up Jesus.

Now, when I thought of this sermon originally, I thought this is the place where I’d describe some time I was sailing and got hit by a squall and got scared. But I think Gordon Lightfoot said it better than I could. In his song, The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, he describes the storm that took down that big Great Lakes freighter, asking “Does anyone know where the love of God goes when the waves turn the minutes to hours?” That’s what’s happening here. Whether on a boat or in life, haven’t we all felt this, haven’t we all been hit by a squall? Maybe it’s the death of someone loved, maybe it’s a dread diagnosis, maybe it’s some other event that threatens to overturn your boat like this boat is threatened.

The story says Jesus wakes up, looks around, tells the sea and the wind to knock it off. Just like that, everything is calm, just like that, it’s ok. Wouldn’t that be great when we hit a storm in life? Wake Jesus up, have him say Stop! to whatever is threatening us and just go on? Is that what’s happening here? 

I think what’s actually going on is something deeper, something more profound. Jesus’ healings, Jesus’ exorcisms, the things we call miracles are actually meant to be signs, signals to show us what we can hardly understand, that in Jesus we are meant to encounter not just a miracle worker but the very presence of God. There’s one other place in scripture where the roiling, restless seas are calmed: at creation 

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.

Genesis 1:1

God is acting here: God is stilling the waters. 

The disciples get it. English translations usually say something like, “…they were filled with great awe.” What the original text actually says is, “They feared a great fear.” It’s interesting that in this story, when they think they are perishing, we’re not told they were afraid. It’s only when Jesus stills the storm that they get scared. And it makes them ask the question that’s going to occupy the rest of this gospel: “who is this?”

We’d like to be able to wake Jesus up whenever there’s a storm, whenever we feel like we might be overwhelmed. There’s an old song that says, “I want Jesus to walk with me.” It’s a great song, bad theology because the point is not for Jesus to walk with me, it’s for me to walk with Jesus. What the gospel shows us is that if I want to walk with Jesus, I’m going to have to go places where it feels stormy, I’m going to have to cross to other shores, I’m going to have to change in ways that feel uncomfortable. He says, “Let us go across to the other side,” and the truth is, I’m comfortable right here—he wants me to go to another shore, a new place, a new way, a new creation. 

“Who is this?” The disciples ask: we should ask too. When we figure it out, then indeed, like those disciples much later, we can cross with him. And our destination will be the farthest shore. And we’ll find that as long as we are with him, we are home.

Amen.

Ohh! Woo! Wow!

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A Sermon for the Locust Grove United Church of Christ of Locust Grove, PA

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor @ 2024

Fourth Sunday After Pentecost/Year B • June 9, 2024

Mark 4:26-34

“A man went out to sow.” It’s simple, isn’t it? Up in Galilee, where Jesus is speaking, most of the people are farmers. I imagine, just like us, they all have their morning ritual. What’s yours? Three mornings a week my version of going to sow is to get up early, take my daughter to a coffee place called Lil Amps. I buy her a latte, or whatever she wants; I get black coffee. We sit and talk for five minute and then announces, “Well, it’s time.” I wish her a good day, remind her I love her, and she walks off to her office in downtown Harrisburg. I take my coffee and go home, read the news, read my email and look at the scripture for the week. Jesus asks us to imagine a farmer, a regular guy, starting out his day: “A man goes out to sow.” Nothing special, nothing momentous, nothing out of the ordinary. But remember what he says first: this is an image, a parable, of the most momentous thing of all, the kingdom of God. Want to see God present? Look here, watch: a man goes out to sow.

My dad grew up on a farm, so we always had a garden. Each person grew their own crop. My job was sweet corn, and he taught me to make a little mound of dirt, put some fertilizer in the middle, then poke five holes around the edges; each one got a kernel of corn. Maybe you have a garden, and you have your own way of sowing, so let’s be clear what happens when a man in Galilee goes out to sow. He doesn’t carefully put down each seed; he doesn’t plow first and sow in the furrows. Grain was sown by walking through the field with a bag on your hip, reaching in, taking a handful and scattering it over the field In another parable, Jesus describes this. It’s what we should imagine here. A man goes out to sow, scattering the precious grain this way and that. Maybe he’s a poor man, and he’s calculated just how much he can afford to take away from the family as seed; maybe he’s worried about the harvest, maybe he’s hopeful it will be a good year. This is the kingdom, and it begins with seeds that hold a secret.

Not knowing is hard for us, I think. I had a class in biology in high school. One of the projects was to grow beans. Beans are usually pretty easy to grow but in my case, I was assigned to grow them in what was a new way, called hydroponics. Hydroponics is growing in water with nutrients dissolved. So I set it all up in a long half-tube, seeds and water and nutrients. And I waited. I waited about two days. Then I got impatient; the people who had been given little cups of dirt were seeing tiny sprouts, but I wasn’t. So I pulled the seeds up just to check. No sprouts. A couple of days later, I did the same thing. I kept pulling them out and I never saw a single sprout. At the end of the project, everyone else had little bean plants; I had seeds that had gotten stinky and molded. The teacher asked if I had any idea what happened. I told him how I’d pulled them up every day and I still remember how his eyes got wide, and he said, “Jim, you can’t force it, you have to wait.” I flunked. That’s one reason I’m here today instead of doing biology.

A man goes out to sow, and then he does—nothing. This is the part that always gets me in trouble with gardeners. “What? What about weeding? What about fertilizing? What about all the hard work?” Sorry, I don’t know. I just know what Jesus said: he sleeps and rises, night and day; he waits. He just waits. He doesn’t pull up the plants like I did; he waits. And Jesus points this out: “The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head.” There is a process, there is a creative, God given process and the best the sower can do is wait. Waiting is hard, isn’t it? I’ve been to hundreds of church conferences over the years, times when clergy gather along with active lay people and talk about their year in the church. There are stories of successful stewardship campaigns, programs that turned out great, and things to try. I have never been to a single conference in almost 50 years when someone said, “Oh, we slept and rose, slept and rose; we waited.” 

Mark’s gospel is the closest of all the gospels to Jesus, and it alternates between two times. One is “Immediately!” When Jesus is baptized, immediately, the spirit drives him into the wilderness. When he calls his disciples, immediately they respond. When he heals, immediately the person is whole. ‘Immediately’ occurs 28 times in this short gospel, more than in Matthew and Luke put together. The other time that happens over and over again is that Jesus tells his disciples not to talk about the amazing things they see, the healings, the time on the mountain when he shines with a heavenly glow. It isn’t time to tell these things. Just like the man who went out to sow, they have to wait; they have to sleep and rise and let the unseen work of the Spirit go on, trust that God is working. 

Of course, the parable tells us, eventually the harvest comes. No sleeping then! I’ve lived in a couple of rural communities, and harvest is a time when nothing else matters. You rush and work as late as there’s light because once the crop is ripe, you only have so much time to get it in. Then, like Jesus in Mark’s gospel, everything is “Immediately!” What does the man who went out to sow do when it’s harvest time? He puts in the sickle, in other words, he uses everything he has to harvest the crop that was sown. 

What is the kingdom like? It’s a harvest, but it’s also these other times: sowing and waiting as well.  And one of the most important questions to ask in a church is: what time is it? It’s a question our consistory ought to be asking, it’s a question for the search committee, it’s a question for all of us: what time is it here? Is it time for sowing? Is it time for waiting? Is it time for harvest? Because if we wait when it’s time for sowing, we’ll never get anywhere; if we try to harvest when it’s time for waiting, we just end up with moldy beans.

Perhaps this is what Paul is trying to teach the Corinthian Christians. He says, “We walk by faith, not by sight.” That sounds like someone who understands the Spirit’s work is not always visible, like the sower who sleeps and rises while the earth produces of itself. And finally, he comes to the harvest moment.

5:16 From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way. So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!
[ 2 Corinthians 5:16-17]

Wow! God isn’t just improving things, God is making a whole new creation!

Jesus doesn’t want us to miss that wow. So we have this other parable about a mustard seed. I used to think of this as a story about gradual growth, from little to big, but I’ve become convinced that it’s not about growth at all. It’s about wow. You know the wow moment? In a couple of weeks we’re going to celebrate the fourth of July and most places will have fireworks. We have a boat in a slip in Baltimore that’s just across a little water from Fort McHenry, where the “rockets red glare, the bombs bursting in air” actually happened almost 210 years ago. Every year there’s the same conversation. A colored rocket shoots up giving off sparks and someone says “oooh!!!” And then another, sometimes bigger and there’s a “woooo” and finally at the end when all the rockets shoot off, someone will always say “wow!” 

Christ invites us to the same “oooh! Wooo! Wow!” With the story of the mustard seed. All over Galilee, mustard was a plant that grew wild in the ditches and along roads. Left alone, it spreads and grows up in the summer to big bushes. But this growth isn’t the point: the point is that looking at tiny mustard seeds, you’d never expect a big shrub. Look at Jesus: you’d never expect a resurrection. Look at us: you’d never expect a new creation. But there he is; here we are. The last part about the birds making nests isn’t just artistic license; it’s actually a reference to a story in the book of Daniel. The nesting birds are a symbol of God’s New Creation. They’re meant to make us go, “Wow!”

What does the kingdom of God look like? It looks like someone sowing, someone waiting, someone harvesting, each at the right time. What time is it here? 

What does the kingdom of God feel like? It feels like the unbelievable surprise of something tiny becoming the means of a whole new creation. Something small: like you, like me. 

Woooo…wow. 

Amen.

Ready, Set, Go!

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A Sermon for the Salem United Church of Christ

by Rev. James Eaton • © 2024 All Rights Reserved
Fifth Sunday After Epiphany/Year B • February 4, 2024
Mark 1:29-39

Ready, set, go! It’s how children’s games often start: hide and seek for example. It’s also how races start. I was a track parent years ago: my older daughter ran sprints and relay races. Being a track parent means you sit in the stands on cold, rainy days, waiting, waiting until someone says, “Oh, Amy’s lining up,” and then you stop your conversation, look down and hear “Ready, set, go!” And watch for a minute or two while your kid and some others run around a track. It’s a rhythm of wait, wait, get ready and then an explosive start and rush to the finish. 

This image captures for me the Gospel of Mark. Especially here in this first chapter, Jesus seems to be on a race. Over and over, we hear the word, “Immediately!”. Jesus is baptized: immediately the Spirit throws him into the wilderness. Jesus invites people to become his disciples; immediately they follow him. Jesus preaches at a synagogue, defeats an evil spirit; immediately his fame spreads. It’s one thing after another and sometimes I read these stories and want to say to Mark, “Slow down! Let me ask some questions, like Pastor Sue did a couple weeks ago.” Jesus goes on: encounters a man with leprosy and immediately he was made clean and Jesus is off to other places.

The Urgency of Now

The urgency comes from the importance the time. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke of the urgency of now and said, “The time is always right to do what is right.” This is the time, Jesus says, right now, right here, the reign of God is happening. “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near, repent and believe in the good news.” Everyone hearing this story knows how it ends. “After John was arrested…”, Mark begins and we already know the destination is the arrest and crucifixion of Jesus himself. Mark is inviting us in between the arrest of John and the death of Jesus and there’s no time to waste. Immediately: get ready, get set, go. 

Last week we heard the story of Jesus casting out a demonic spirit. He’s been to the synagogue, he’s been to worship, just like we’re gathered here. In the midst of the service, someone possessed by a spirit caused a commotion and Jesus casts the spirit out. Now the service is over and they go out, across the street, to Peter’s house: “Immediately!” Now I suspect you’ve all had a preacher drop in so you know there’s a bit of preparation involved. In our house, it means cleaning and straightening and making sure there’s a bite to eat. If it’s Pastor Sue, it means having tea on. But here, Jesus and a bunch of his friends are coming over and the matriarch is sick; Peter’s mother in law has a fever,. Jesus goes to her and takes her by the hand. It’s easy to rush by this detail but it’s important. Good Jewish men don’t touch women in Jesus’ time. Women are in the background, working but not seen, certainly not touched. Yet when he encounters this woman he touches her, takes her by the hand, just like in the song Joe sang, “Precious Lord, take my hand…” and lifts her up. The word here for being lifted up is the same one translated elsewhere as ‘resurrection’. This is the first resurrection, this is the model for our call to grace, that Jesus lifts us up, raises us. Just as Paul says: “…if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.” [Romans 6:8]

Call and Service

We’ve been talking about calling for a few weeks and I want to notice this woman’s call. It doesn’t look like what we’ve often been taught. This woman doesn’t comes to Jesus, he comes to her. The effect of being raised by Jesus is to make her well, to liberate her from the fever, just as the man with the demon was liberated. When God calls us, God makes us ready, gets us set. And finally, there is the “go!” Jesus raises the woman and she gets up and serves. Mark doesn’t tell us how she serves. Does she prepare a meal? Does she fix him a plate? Does she help him prepare sermons? We don’t know. We simply know she serves. The same word is used by Mark to describe the angels who care for Jesus in the wilderness. When we serve, we become then angels. 

The call of service can change the course of lives. Robert Coles is psychiatrist whose life has spanned an amazing group of people. His aunt was Anna Freud, he grew up during the depression and later in life he had the opportunity to interview and talk to a great number of people involved in the Civil Rights struggle of the 1960’s.  He became fascinated with people who felt what he called “the call of service”: privileged college kids who went to poor people to teach children to read. One of those children later said this about the difference one of those teachers had on her own life.

He was a frail-looking Jewish kid with thick glasses, and at first I didn’t know what we’d even talk about. Bt I’ll tell you he saved me, that’s the word, saved. He was kind and thoughtful and he loved reading and he taught me to love reading. He was the one who said to me, “You can get out of all this, you can…” 

What that kid with the thick glasses did was simple: he healed her, he freed her, to hear her own call to service. She grew up, went to college and Harvard Law and then gave up hundreds of thousands of dollars so that she in turn could tutor children in Roxbury, a poor area of Boston.

Robert Coles, Call of Service, p. 176.

I hear this call to serve in my own life here with you. For most of the last 48 years, I’ve served as a pastor of a church. Then I retired and moved to Harrisburg and had to do something I’d only done once before in my whole life: find a church not as a prospective pastor but as a member. I wandered in here at Salem, thinking it would be one stop on a tour of local churches and you all said “Welcome! We hope you come back!” And I did. It wasn’t easy: I’ve had to learn a whole new set o skills. I’m used to preaching sermons, not listening to them. My wife likes decorating; she’s a flight attendant and in a different hotel room two or three nights a week. She imagines rearranging them. The same way, I automatically imagine rearranging the liturgy. It wasn’t easy to not be able to do that. It wasn’t easy to sit in a pew. But I knew I needed to find a place to serve and you gave me one. 

Your Own Call

What about you? What about me? What is your call? How does that call turn into serving? The story in Mark doesn’t stop with raising Peter’s mother-in-law. When the sabbath ends at sundown, people from all over town are brought to Jesus so he can heal them and liberate them from the things that are holding them back. That’s the meaning of healing, isn’t it? We focus on Jesus and the healing but we ought to notice the crowd that brings people: they also serve. This is the real church, this is who we are when we are truly servants of Jesus Christ. When someone asks me about Salem, the temptation is to describe the beautiful building or the wonderful organ. But that’s not Salem; that’s not the church. The real church is you and I serving together. The real church is you and I helping each other find our call, get ready, get set, and then going. It’s not always as immediate as Mark’s gospel would have it yet there is a faithfulness that lasts. When Jesus is on the cross, the disciples are all absent. It’s the women who are there, perhaps this very woman, Peter’s mother-in-law, serving to the end. Jesus raises her and she serves. This is our call as well: to serve with others, bringing those who need healing to Jesus. Ready, set, go: listen for the call, find the way you can serve.

Amen.