Temptation

Mark 1:9-15

February 22, 2015

Lent 1

So Jesus’ baptism was nice.

The heavens were torn apart and the spirit came down

and the voice of God said “you are my beloved. “

It was a beautiful thing I’m sure.

The Temptation
Corwin Knapp Linson

But Jesus had no time for a baptismal party.

No time for punch and sheet cake

and those little corner pimento cheese sandwiches.

because the nice spirit who just descended lightly on Jesus

just picked Jesus up and threw him out into the wilderness.

When we think of the wilderness it’s nice

Usually a weekend getaway, a respite from our normal life.

But in Jesus time, the wilderness was not

a place people ever really wanted to go.

It was desert.

There were no resources, no springs or streams,

no plants for food, no shelter.

Besides the wild beasts mentioned,

There was also the real possibility of wild people

who were out to do others harm.

The Wilderness represented dangerous, unruly, risky places.

Places that most people would be avoiding.

We could consider the wilderness as

the opposite of “normal and respectable”.

Yet this is where the Spirit drives Jesus right after his baptism.

Right after the anointing of him and the beginning of ministry.

The Spirit sends Jesus into a place that people avoid.

And not only is Jesus driven into this uncomfortable place.

But it says he was there to be tempted by Satan.

Notice that in Mark’s gospel –

what most people think was the first gospel written down --

there is no explanation of what that temptation was,

This whole story is just one sentence:

¹³He was in the wilderness for forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts;

and the angels waited on him.

When Christianity has defined Temptation,

we often think of vices:

Dessert, drinking, drugs, sexual temptations,

whatever your particular cup of tea is.

Whatever those temptation are –

they’re seen as a deviation from a “normal and respectable” life.

A normal and respectable life is here -

and temptations are there outside.

But are those things out there really our greatest temptation?

In our Adult Ed class last week,

on Christian practices, our video was from a

man named Shane Claibourne, he’s a very young

and up and coming theologian. He’s kind of hip looking.

He was saying that normally, when we testify to Jesus power

to transform lives, we’re usually talking about Jesus

taking people who are outside of our mainstream -

who are not “normal and respectable” -

and following Jesus helps them become “normal and respectable”.

Like people who were once suffering addictions or in gangs

and now they’re like working, family type people.

And, of course, those are great testimonies of Jesus power to heal.

But he said his story was opposite that.

He had a very normal life,

He was destined for “normal and respectable”.

He was homecoming king, had good grades, he was popular

was going to go to college and would

have had a normal respectable career.

But then Jesus came in and messed everything up for him.

He went to India to help children for a year

he gave up all his stuff,

now he lives in community with other Christians

They make his own clothes, grow their own food,

they work and live in one of the worst neighborhoods in Philadelphia.

He does not have what most people would call

a “normal and respectable life”

God called him outside a normal life to something different.

And I think that maybe Jesus temptation

wasn’t chocolate cake, or drinking, or lust or

anything outside the norm.

Don’t you think that his greatest temptation was

just to live a normal life?

At Jesus baptism, the heavens opened up and God spoke,

claimed Jesus as his own, and right then, he had to make the choice

to either have the wife and the 2.5 kids,

open up his carpentry business,

and go to synagogue on Saturday night.

or to follow God’s particular call for him – savior of the world.

And what if that is really our greatest temptation too?

To always go with the status quo, to follow the way of the world,

to do what is “normal and respectable”

and follow whatever the dominant culture expects.

Now I’m not saying that the spirit is calling each one of us

to leave our jobs and family and drop out and live in

communes in poor neighborhoods.

Maybe some of us, but not all of us.

But I do think that God is calling us to be different.

Different than the dominant culture.

-To trust God above our own abilities,

-To not put our trust in the gods of the market system

or the blind pursuit of wealth and security.

-To trust in God’s abundance. To share what we have.

-To not fall in step with the drums of war and violence.

-To not fear those who are different from us.

-To care for other people’s families as much as our own.

-To love and pray for our enemies, turn the other cheek.

We are called to be different than the world.

And that means we often have to choose what is

not seen as “normal and respectable”.

This Lent we are focusing on “Walking with Jesus.”

Walking with Jesus in his life and ministry and

following his steps to the cross.

In our baptism, God chose us for his ministry in the world.

We are called to Walk with Jesus in our lives.

And sometimes that means making difficult choices

God’s call is not easy.

Jesus road was not smooth.

But just like Jesus, we are promised

that God will be with us in the wilderness

as we stumble and fall

and throughout our journey.

Hope for the Journey

Mark 9:2-9

February 15, 2015

Transfiguration

Transfiguration
James Janknect

Today is Transfiguration.
The day that we remember when Jesus and

the disciples go  up on the mountaintop and suddenly,

Jesus is changed, transfigured, he’s pure white,

he’s glowing with light. And he is talking

with two great figures of the faith,

Elijah and Moses. It’s beautiful,

Some say that this is the resurrection story

put in the middle of the gospel.

It has some of those qualities.

Some say it’s a testament to the divinity of Jesus

Showing his relationship with the great prophets

and leaders of ages past. That’s true too.

What it is is a vision.

And this vision was given to help the disciples I think.

The vision is beautiful, wonderful,

so wonderful that Peter offers to build three worship stations

and permanently post their whole ministry right there

at the top of the mountain.

But that’s regarded as a silly thought right away.

Their ministry is down at the bottom of the mountain.

Immediately after this, they go back down the mountain.

Back down to the poverty, the pain, the sickness, the hunger

the dysfunctional and oppressive systems of the world.

They have to come down again.

because there is more work to do.

But I think that the vision that Peter, James and John

received at the top of the mountain,

helped them through when they got back down.

The vision let them know that they were doing the right thing,

they were following the right person.

That Jesus really was the son of God.

That is the power of a vision.

It gets people through hard times.

Now a days, we don’t put too much

credence in visions.

If someone said that they saw Jesus glowing in light

speaking to Elijah and Moses,

most of us would be suspicious,

wonder if that person is in their right mind.

Were they crazy, did they get enough sleep?

Those kinds of visions are not held in high regard today.
But that doesn't mean we don’t have visions.

Today, our visions are our imaginations,

pictures of a better world, a better situation

or they are glimpses of things

that assure us that a better world is possible.

Today, God still gives us visions of pure love,

kindness, community, sacrifice, and joy.

We see people helping other people, welcoming,

standing up for others.

We see people who are in desperate situations,

coming back to rejoin life and the world.

We see peace where there was war,

joy where there was sadness, hope where there was defeat.

Those are visions.

Things that we can come back to

when things don’t look so good for us.

When our lives get difficult, sad, or downright awful.

We can return to our visions of love and beauty and hope

Those things that going through the difficult times.

At Gethsemane, we have a vision.

We have come together and over the last year

the council has written our vision.

A statement that paints a picture of what

we want to do and be in the future.

Our vision statement is:

To empower a servant community that overflows

with God’s grace, justice, and welcome.

Not quite as impressive as Jesus glowing on a mountain,

but it serves in some of the same ways.

To get to that vision, we took what our congregation did best,

what we valued, what we seemed to  gravitate to,

and we prayed and asked God to show us

what we could be if we did all this well.

And over time, we got an answer.

We saw that we would be a community that serves like Jesus served,

that we would empower other people to serve too.

That our community would feel God’s grace so much

that other people would feel it, just by being around us,

That everyone would be welcomed into

our community and know of God’s welcome through us.

And we saw that we would overflow with God’s justice too.

That we would help make God’s vision of the kingdom

a reality in this world:

where everyone was treated like a child of God

and get an equal chance in this world regardless of their state in life.

where people would be fed and housed and clothed.

And our community would have a part in making it happen.

It’s a good vision. It is a great image of what is possible.

But there is still work to be done

We have to make a plan and then after that,

we have to make those plans a reality.

  

And we have to do actual work of ministry here,

down at the bottom of the mountain

Where people are not empowered to serve,

Where people don’t know and trust God’s grace and welcome,

and we don’t know how to share it.

Where God’s justice is not evident, and people still suffer.

But when things get difficult or downright awful,

We always have our vision to return to

to remind us where we need to go, and what is possible.

This Wednesday is Ash Wednesday,

the beginning of Lent.  The difficult time in the church.
The time of the church where we do the hard spiritual work of

examining our own shortcomings and frailties,

our vulnerability and our sins.

And we walk with Jesus through his ministry,

his betrayal, arrest, and his way to the cross.

But before we go there,

we get a taste of glory, a taste of beauty,

a taste of hope, a glimpse of the resurrection that is to come.

We see Jesus on the mountain top,

We see the heavens opened up and hear God’s voice say

“this is my son, the Beloved, listen to him.”

Dealing With Our Demons

Mark 1:21-28

February 1, 2015

So what is a unclean spirit doing in a place of worship?

A church, a synagogue?

Demons aren’t allowed in places like this. Right?

I bet those people that went to that synagogue were mortified.

They have, Jesus, this guest preacher in.

He obviously knows what he’s doing.

A very prestigious person.

And that man with the unclean spirit starts yelling at him.

I mean they probably have learned to ignore the man,

and act like he wasn’t there but to have him yell

The Possessed Man in the Synagogue
James Tissot, 1886

at the visitor like that!

That’s not the image that we want

in our place of worship, right?

In a church, everyone is nice and respectful.

everyone is kind and patient. 

Reasonable and balanced.

We wouldn’t let an unclean spirit 

roam around the church.

We’re better that that.

It sounds silly, but that’s kind of how

people of God have acted

for the last few thousand years.

From the Pharisees to the church ladies.

We’ve tried to act like we’re different in here than out there.

While we’re in church, we’ve tried to

trying to quell every kind of normal thing

that would happen out there-

No coughing, no talking, no crying,

no screaming, no bodily functions.

And definitely not a place to share our

sorrow or pain, fears, and shortcomings.

I remember vividly, at five years old,

my grandmother trying to make me sit perfectly still through church.

Honestly, she scolded me for just fidgeting in my seat.

Up until that point, I had never given the indication

that I would sit still for anything else,

but we were in church. So her expectation went way high.

It’s almost as if the culture of church

makes us want to check our humanity at the door.

We have done our best to act like we’re

set apart from the rest of the world.

Like somehow as believers, we’re not as human as everyone else.

Like somehow we don’t need Jesus.

I wonder how long that man with the unclean spirit

had been coming to the synagogue.
How many outbursts, how much discomfort,

how much sorrow and pain he had to endure alone

as people pretended it wasn’t happening.

How many times did people look away,

roll their eyes, and ignore him -

Before Jesus came in and did something about it.

When I was about 13,

I pretty much stopped going to church

like a lot of people do at that age.

And I used the same excuse that many people use.
The church was too hypocritical.

People were not living out what was being taught.

There was gossip, and bad behavior, lying,

people hurting other people’s feelings,

leaving people out, just like there was in the real world.

I started to become a little self-righteous

(13 is about when people start to become a little self righteous.)

I convinced myself that I would never do that sort of thing.

But I did come back to church.

And looking back,

I have certainly not been perfect.

I have had my moments of unclean spirits,

I have been hypocritical just like everyone else has.

If I could talk to the 13 year old me,

I would tell her that I was thinking about the church all wrong.

(She wouldn’t listen, of course, but I would still tell her.)

The church is not meant to be a place separate

from the rest of the world.

Sanitized from bad activity, pure and clean.

The church is just like the world, demons and all.

In the church, we learn how to recognize demons,

other people’s and our own,

and we learn how to confront them and work on them

with the power and compassion and love of God.

 We don’t come to church just to worship God.

We come to church to be in community with other believers.

We come here to interact with others, to make decisions,

to disagree, to be in conflict, to manipulate,

to slip up and be short with one another –

To have our demons exposed in front of the congregation

and then to experience the power, forgiveness,

grace and mercy of God, through the community.

We are as human as the rest of the world.

And places of worship are supposed to be

the places where we can bring the worst of our humanity

and have Jesus meet us.

It’s the place where we can repent and forgive.

Where our darkness can meet the light of God.

Walking in the light,

doesn’t mean being perfect, or better than others.

It actually means realizing we are not light ourselves.

Letting God’s light rest on us.

And letting that light change and transform us.

Like in that synagogue

this is the place where Jesus meets us,

confronts our demons and transforms us.

And when our demons are confronted by the light of Christ,

in truth, love, mercy and forgiveness,

that is when we are truly changed and set free.

Drop Your Net

Mark 1: 14-20

January 25, 2015

Jesus calls the disciples,

And tells them to follow him right in the middle of work.

Right in the middle of their fishing day,
Fishing was not a relaxing hobby.
Their safety, their relatively quiet life,

He tells them to put down their whatever they’re doing and follow him.

Imagine being at your job, or doing whatever you do in your daily life

and being asked to drop it all.

Would you do it?

Do you feel you could do it?

What would hold you back from interrupting your life?

Maybe we don’t even have to consider

leaving everything behind like the disciples did.

Do you even feel like if you were called,

that you could even change your

patterns, your habits, your thought processes,

 your expectations, your plans for the future?

Could you drop those things to follow?

Simon Peter, Andrew, James, John and the others

didn’t seem to even think about it.

They just left everything.

Now we have to remember that in Jesus time,

being a fisherman was different than it is today.

Or a way to live independently as a business owner.

Fishing was a very hard, usually unrewarding jobs.

You didn’t even own your own boat.

Basically, the leader rented a boat from the big, rich boat owners,

you put a net down into the water every day.

And you hoped there were enough fish in it at the end

to pay for the boat and the little pay your crew asked for.

Maybe there was some left over and you made a little money.

But if there weren’t enough fish, then you owed the boat owners money.

The crew didn’t get paid, you would end up working the next day,

just to pay for your previous days work.

Most fishing people lived in debt.

So maybe giving up their fishing nets was not

that much to give up.

But it was a kind of security. It was known.

It was what they were accustomed to.

It was familiar. Their lives were built around it.

That fishing net was their safety net – as weak as it was.

And that’s often enough to stop people from changing.

My uncle used to tell me:

“If we’re left to our own devices, most people will stay in a pile of poo

because, well, at least it’s warm in there.”

But thankfully, we are not left to our own devices.

We are called by Jesus to do something more.

To be transformed and to help transform the world.

Individually and as a church community.

But how can we pick up a new thing,

when our hands are busy clinging to another thing?

Not all of us are asked to leave our jobs, or our families,

and everything we’ve ever known.

But we are asked to trade in something.

Those things that give us security, but don’t give back to us.

Those things that stand in the way of being what God wants us to be.

Maybe it’s our love of money

Maybe its an addiction to something.

Maybe it’s being alone or isolated.

Maybe we’re asked to give up our free time,

our perceived freedom, or lack of commitment.

Maybe as a church it’s some old programs, some committee meetings.

The way we’ve been doing things for the longest time

Following Jesus requires change.

We have to drop things in order to pick things up.

There is always a trade,

from the known to the unknown.

We talked about Martin Luther King Jr.’s

call to service as Civil Right’s Leader in the 1950’s.

Imagine the things that he was asked to give up:

A quiet private life. His anonymity.

Time as a pastor in a community church.

Time at home with his family and friends.

His safety and the safety of his family.

Eventually, his call cost him his life.

And the black community in Montgomery had to give up things too.

The suffering of segregation was hard,

But to get out of it, they had to trade

the life that they knew.

their free time.

They had to put down what they knew

and venture into the unknown.

Yesterday we were planning a vision for our future.

A lot of visions and plans were talked about

plans for partnering with our community,

for sharing our faith with others,

for focusing outside ourselves rather than inside.

  

These are all great visions. Visions from the Spirit.

Calls from God to follow Jesus and his way.

But to reach those visions, we will have to put down something.

Maybe its some of the things that we currently do,

But it’s about more than that.

We will have to change our ways our habits.

Put aside our old thought patterns,

give away some of our routine,

some of our comfort, we have to put down

some of our old hopes the dreams that we had before

and take up new ones.

We have to put down the known

in order for us to venture into the unknown.

So, what is the net that you need to put down?

What are the nets that we have to put down as a church?

If you are in this room right now,

God has chosen you to do something wonderful in this world.

Jesus has called you to go to places unknown,

by roads that we’re unfamiliar with.

God has called us to put down our nets and follow.

Let’s pray.

Gracious God. Show us the path that Jesus wants us to take.

Help us to put down those things that stand in our way.

Help us to rely on you and not our own devices or plans,

for security. Help us to drop our nets and follow you.

Can You Hear God's Call?

John 1: 43-51

Epiphany 2

January 18, 2015

After reading these stories, I always think,

“wow, the disciples had it easy.”

I mean it was Jesus, actually Jesus that called

them into discipleship.

From all accounts, Jesus had a certain something,

a way with words, a power and energy.

And his message was new and different.

When I was young, the church had been around

for 2000 years and we had Fr. O’Hearn to share it with us,

an older man who was not much for

conversation and would read his sermons

directly from his script without ever looking up.

But even if you have a pastor who does better at the sermon thing,

or better at interpersonal relations,

there are so many options out there now.

So many other things to follow.

So many more exciting, louder, more convincing voices to follow

than anything the church can come up with.

And the message of Jesus has been around for thousands of year.

Sometimes it seems to fall into the background

with all the rest of the noise out there.

So how do we hear the call today?

The call to come to worship, the call to serve,

to forgive, to help someone,

to start a project in God’s name,

To give our money,

to invest our time and energy,

The call to walk in that light that we’ve been given?

  

I’ve heard of some people hearing God’s voice,

like Samuel did in Eli’s house.

it’s a strong and clear call to action in God’s name.

Doing things with the absolute confidence,

knowing what God wants them to do.

But most of us just don’t have that experience.

For the rest of us, the call from God comes in more subtle ways.

Actually boring ways.

- Sometimes it’s a persistent thought that

keeps coming back in our heads.

- Sometimes it’s a nagging feeling in the pit

of our stomach that tells us.

- Sometimes it’s a story that we keep seeing repeatedly

in our conversations, or in the news.

- Sometimes it’s a persistent person that keeps asking

you to do something over and over

until you finally give in and agree to do what they want you to.

- Sometimes it’s the coincidence of circumstances that seems to drag us

to a certain place and time and we can’t avoid doing what

God wants us to do.

These ways might not seem as exciting as lights

or disembodied voices.

But these are just some of the ways that God works in our lives.

To call us to places that we never thought we would go.

This week we celebrate 

Martin Luther King, Jr.

A person who certainly did some marvelous things in his short life.

He would change history, change laws,

change the lives of millions of people for years to come.

But his call to this particular 

position of service to God

was not glamorous, beautiful, or stunning.

It was actually some very boring common things that came together.

  

In 1954, Martin Luther King had already received a call from God

to be pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church

in Montgomery, Alabama.

By then, the NAACP and unions had been working on the bus situation

for at least five years, trying to find the right person to back and

defend and trying to challenge of the law that

said that black people had to sit in the back of the bus.

In 1955, when Rosa Parks was arrested, before her trial,

the organizers needed churches to support the boycott.

E.D. Nixon who was a union leader in Montgomery

and the organizer of the movement,

asked the newest pastor in town Martin Luther King

if he would support the bus boycott with his congregation.

And could they have the first meeting in King’s church.

King said he had to think about it and call him back.

Eventually he said that they would support it

and they could meet there.

After a one day bus boycott,

Nixon met with the Montgomery

clergy to talk about expanding it to all Montgomery.

But the ministers just wanted a low-key boycott that wouldn’t

upset the white power structure.

Nixon was indignant, he pointed out that poor congregations

worked hard to put money into the collection plates to keep

pastors comfortable but when the congregations needed

the clergy to stand up for them,

the comfortable ministers refused to do it.

Nixon threatened to reveal all the ministers cowardice

to the whole black community.

Now we don’t know exactly what happened there in King’s

mind or heart, but that speech by Nixon must have done something.

Martin Luther King spoke up and said that he wasn’t afraid.

  

And that was it.

King was elected as the chair of the committee.

he gave the keynote address at the next meeting

and the leader of the civil rights movement in the US

His call from God came through a phone call for support,

a space usage request, a committee meeting,

an angry speech by a frustrated union organizer,

and being elected to leadership because no one else would do it.

No lights, no disembodied voices necessary.

God’s call to one of the most important leaders

of the 20^th century, came through very practical,

normal, boring, some would even say annoying things.

Now, we may not be the most important

leader of the 21^st century.

We may never make any history books.

But God is calling each one of us to do some great things

in our communities, with the people around us,

We are being called every day to do our part in

making God’s Kingdom here on earth.

And God is calling us through those

normal, practical, even annoying ways.

A phone call, a committee meeting, an angry speech.

but we’re all doing our part to create the kingdom of God,

and God’s call to us happens in much the same way.

normal, practical, even annoying things

can spur us on to do things that

we never thought we could do.

God has seen you.

God has called you by name.

Hear God’s call and see what

great things you and God will do.

Getting into Trouble

Mark 1:4-11

January 11, 2014 

Baptism of Christ

My previous congregation was a physically large,

downtown congregation that would come up first

in most searches of congregations in Austin.

So we would get a lot of calls from people

who were not very affiliated with the congregation

who wanted weddings, funerals, and especially baptisms.

Some people would want their children, usually babies baptized

without ever being at church or not being at church for a long time

So whenever we got these calls, we would ask the parents

why did they want to have their child baptized.

Often times it had something to do with grandparents pressuring them,

but other times, the word “protection” would come up.

Sometimes people thought their child would not go to heaven,

But I remember one specific conversation with

one mother who thought that baptism

would give her child protection from the world.

She said, “you know, like sickness, accidents, getting into trouble.”

I remember the discussion because I regretted what I said.

Now I was not long out of seminary and hadn’t quite learned

how important it was not to just say everything that

popped into my head in every conversation.

And I said to her, “I think if baptism happens right,

it should get your child in more trouble.”

That did not satisfy her or pique her interest at all

and I think the call after that point was pretty brief.

I regretted it because I probably should have

introduced the concept to her slower

and with more discussion,

but, with you all, I still stand by that statement.

Baptism should get us into trouble, not out of it.

As Lutherans, we stress the promise,

the forgiveness, the eternal life, of baptism,

and I believe those heartily,

But sometimes we stress it so much that we

omit the part about the

invitation of baptism, the challenge, the danger.

Baptism is a promise,

and it’s also a call to DO something in your lifetime.

Sometimes crazy things.

When Jesus was baptized by John,

it was in the wilderness, in an open river,

The Baptism, Andre Miller

with the rushing water around him,

not safe in a church with a font.

It’s outside where anything can happen and anyone can see.

Maybe there is something to that.

Because immediately after he’s baptized -

after he’s blessed by God and called the beloved and given his promise,

he’s chased deeper into the wilderness

without food, water, or protection

to be tempted by the devil.

And then right from there

he goes and starts his public ministry.

Trouble.

And in the same way,

Baptism has driven people to do some crazy things too,

it’s caused Paul to leave his life as a Pharisee

and start churches around the world,

it caused Martin Luther to speak up against

the Roman Catholic church at a time when

that was punishable by death.

It drove Martin Luther King, Jr. to lead

the civil rights movement in America.

 

It drives people to leave their homes

and work with strangers in poverty.

It drives doctors and nurses to risk their own lives

and help people with Ebola in West Africa.

It drives us to work in food pantries, to help homeless people,

clean up people’s lawns, make music, go to seminary,

to give our money away, to pray, to worship,

to join in community, to be on council…

Trouble.

Baptism is not just a comforting end, it’s a risky beginning.

It’s not some kind of protection from this earthly life,

it’s an invitation to really get involved in this earthly life

With the knowledge that wherever we find ourselves

God will be there.

The writer Annie Dillard suggests that we should

wear crash helmets and life preservers to baptisms.

Another pastor suggested that we shouldn’t issue

certificates with baptisms, but warnings.

In our baptism God takes us, loves us,

and whispers in our ear,

God gives us the courage to go where we didn’t think we could.

The promise of baptism is forgiveness, love, and eternal life.

That is the light we are given, nothing can take it away.

And the call of our baptism to walk in that light every day.