{"id":1548,"date":"2024-09-23T08:38:35","date_gmt":"2024-09-23T12:38:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/?p=1548"},"modified":"2024-09-23T08:38:38","modified_gmt":"2024-09-23T12:38:38","slug":"action-this-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/2024\/09\/23\/action-this-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Action This Day"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-audio\"><audio controls src=\"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/Action-This-Day-92324-8.35\u202fAM.mp3\"><\/audio><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">A Sermon for the Locust Grove United Church of Christ of York, PA<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">18<sup>th<\/sup> Sunday After Pentecost\/B \u2022 September 22, 2024<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"http:\/\/bible.oremus.org\/?ql=594094735\">Mark 9:30-37<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">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, \u201cAction this day!\u201d 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!\u2014nevertheless. Action this day\u2014every day. Today\u2019s reading from Mark is an action plan for disciples.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">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\u2019s 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 \u2018transfigure\u2019 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 \u201c\u2026a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, \u2018This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!\u2019 [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\u2019s answer to Jesus\u2019 question, \u201cWho do you say I am?\u201d, that he is the Christ is being confirmed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">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\u2019t. Instead, they encounter a crowd and get distracted. There\u2019s a boy who is possessed; I\u2019m 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That brings us up to the section we read today. Along the way, as they go through Galilee, Jesus again predicts his coming passion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u2026he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, \u2018The 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.\u2019 [Mark 9:31]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But just like the first time, the disciples don\u2019t understand. It\u2019s hard to know whether they don\u2019t get it or they just don\u2019t want to believe it. Mark says they were afraid to ask him. It\u2019s uncomfortable; we don\u2019t like talking about it either. Think how many more people show up for Easter than Good Friday services.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But at the end of the day, it\u2019s Jesus asking the questions. \u201cWhat were you discussing?\u201d It was customary for disciples to walk behind the master, so perhaps he\u2019d heard them arguing and like a parent ignoring squalling kids, he ignored it; maybe he just didn\u2019t know. They tell him they were arguing about which one of them was the Number One Disciple\u2014who was the greatest. This is so wild, it\u2019s funny. Jesus tells them he\u2019s going to be killed; they argue about their rank. He\u2019s 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!\u2014they want to be his ministers, his subordinates, and they want to figure out right now who is first, who is third, who is eleventh.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So Jesus does what he often does: he tells them the truth, and then he illustrates it.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, &#8220;Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.\u201d Then he took a little child and put it among them, and taking it in his arms he said to them. \u201c&#8221;Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.\u201d [Mark 9:35ff]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">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.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Then Jesus caps it by welcoming a child. Now as soon as I said \u2018child\u2019 I know you were thinking of little kids. Maybe you remember your own kids, maybe you\u2019re thinking of grandkids. But child has a much bigger meaning in Jesus\u2019 time. The word we translate \u2018child\u2019 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\u2019t 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\u2019s not right for a child to be next to their leader. But Jesus embraces the child there as well as here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">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 \u201cReverend\u201d, his was \u201cMost Reverend.\u201d I asked him if there was an intermediate step of \u201cMore Reverend\u201d I could get. We like hierarchies; we like to know our place among them. That\u2019s what the disciples are doing. It\u2019s Jesus, only Jesus, who is standing there saying, \u201cWhoever wants to be first should be last.\u201d It\u2019s Jesus, only Jesus, who is saying no to all our hierarchies.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">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?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">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\u2019t understand. And I know that I am one of them: I don\u2019t understand either. I don\u2019t understand suffering; I don\u2019t understand a savior who goes to a cross. It\u2019s too much; it makes no earthly sense. Of course, that is the point: it doesn\u2019t 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\u2014what should I do? What should we do? Simple: welcome children.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That\u2019s it: that\u2019s his plan for us. That\u2019s 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\u2019ll see next week, children is what he calls us. And that is what we are: God\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Amen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Sermon for the Locust Grove United Church of Christ of York, PA by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor 18th Sunday After Pentecost\/B \u2022 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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[101,39,146,3,2,130],"tags":[361,362,67,363],"class_list":["post-1548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-after-pentecost","category-exegesis","category-mark","category-sermon","category-worship","category-year-b","tag-action","tag-children","tag-jesus","tag-welcome"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1548"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1548\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1550,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1548\/revisions\/1550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}