“The Gospel of Mark: The Last will be First” Mark 9: 33-37

Jesus had the disciples caught in a corner. They had been arguing the whole way to Capernum about something a bit unsavory - who was the most important amongst them. Now Jesus was asking them what they had been talking about, and they were too ashamed to answer him. 

We are now in the final week of our sermon series about deep lessons that can be learned from the Gospel of Mark, and today’s is perhaps the hardest for us in modern times - the last shall be first.

Have you ever noticed that when people feel threatened they often engage in one of two behaviors? They either get really loud, starting to argue with one another even over little things that aren’t of much importance, or they shut down. This is often called the fight or flight response. Well the disciples were knee deep in the “fight” side of this equation. There lives were filled with uncertainty. When they agreed to follow and learn from Jesus they weren’t given a step by step guide about where they were going or what they would be doing. Most days they didn’t know where their food was coming from. Most nights they didn’t know where they would lay their heads. They left their families behind, and now Jesus is talking about leaving them, saying that the Son of Man has to be killed. It’s almost like their brains were so overwhelmed that they shut down and just started to bicker about something of such little importance, especially in the context of being Jesus’s disciples - about which of them was the most important and who would be Jesus’s second in command in the coming Kingdom. 

They were right to feel ashamed about arguing about who was going to be the greatest - but before we start ragging on the disciples, let’s be honest brothers and sisters, how many times have we been there? How many times have we sat in the board meeting or the parking lot and argued about things that have nothing, I repeat nothing, to do with who Jesus is calling us to be as a church? Its almost like we get overwhelmed by the greatness of Jesus and the scope of who we are called to be as the Church, so our brains just shut down and we either go into fight or flight mode. 

When asked, the disciples were so ashamed of what they had been talking about that they couldn’t even answer the question that Jesus was asking them. But Jesus already knew. He knew that they were arguing about who was and who was to be the greatest, so he took the time to teach the disciples a hard lesson - the last will be first. 

Let’s be honest, very few people like to be last. We don’t want to be the last one picked for a team as a child. We don’t want to be the last one in line as adults. We want at least one person to be behind us, so we aren’t dead last. But when we take that aversion to being last and apply it to discipleship we miss the point. We think that Jesus’s love is like a pie or something tangible, where those who are first get bigger pieces and those who are last get the crumbs. Brothers and sisters, when we claim to be disciples its not about us, its about the Kingdom of God. Its about putting God first. And when we put God first we realize that there is more than enough love and grace for everyone. The Kingdom of God is not going to run out, if we put ourselves last.

In fact, for the sake of the Kingdom of God, when you position yourself to be last you may just be given opportunities to minister in God’s name. Recently, I was at the grocery store where too few lanes seemed to be open. People started to line up behind me with much smaller orders, so I let two folks skip ahead of me. When it was my turn, the cashier explained to that it had been a really hard day - cash registers and scanners seemed to be down and tensions were high, but how refreshing it was to see someone allow others to go ahead of me. What came naturally to me was a blessing for this worn down cashier. 

But Jesus’s teaching doesn’t stop with telling the disciples that the last shall be first, he also tells them that disciples need to be servants to all. Jesus was trying to show them to lead by being a servant first. Servant didn’t have any better of a connotation back in Jesus’s time then it does today. People don’t want to be servants, they want to be served. But Jesus was telling the disciples, and telling us, that the Kingdom of God isn’t about the things of this world -human power and privilege. Jesus is showing them what it looks like to be a servant first. 

A lot of people like to be in charge. We don’t like people telling us what to do or pointing out places where we can grow. We want to do thing our way, thank you very much. Part of human nature is to want power and authority and everything that comes with it. Jesus however says that the power of the Kingdom of God comes in laying our wants and desires and human nature aside in order to have God’s name be glorified. 

God has enough people, brothers and sisters, who will only be a servant or be last on their own terms. God has enough people in churches that try to bargain saying you know what God, I’ll serve my brother and sister, but not really with a willing heart. Or I’ll put myself last God, but only for show. Or I’ll do this for you now, God, but only if you do something greater for me later. 

The true measure of greatness, friends, doesn’t lie in misunderstanding or stretching what God wants from us. It comes in welcoming the child. Welcoming the vulnerable. In ancient society, children were often pushed aside and were seen as having nothing to offer until they became older. In a time and place where age, gender, and class mattered, children were seen as about as low as you could get.  The powerful oppressed everyone else in most cases, and especially children who didn’t have the protection of family were mistreated, becoming slaves at early ages. 

Yet, it was a lowly child that Jesus took in his arms and said that whoever welcomed the children welcomed him. What was Jesus saying? Jesus was saying that welcoming those who aren’t looked at in society as folks to get you ahead, that is servanthood. He was saying that it matters not who is the greatest, but how we treat people. 

Friends, the disciples that day weren’t just traveling to the physical place of Capernum, they were having their spiritual eyes opened to what it means to be a true follower of Christ. We are on this journey as well, and sometimes we screw up. Sometimes we start to fight about things that don’t matter. Sometimes we need Jesus to gently correct us and put us on the right path again - the path of servanthood and setting ourselves aside for the sake of God’s Kingdom. Amen. 

“The Gospel of Mark: Honor Me” Mark 7:1-23

Some of my favorite pictures from my toddler years are those of me cleaning beside my mom and dad. I’m not sure how many young ones grow up with Little Tykes vacuum cleaners, but it was certainly a staple of my childhood. Even as I grew older I would have bursts where all I wanted to do was clean. My roommates in seminary loved that I insisted on cleaning every week so they wouldn’t have to worry about it. I like cleanliness. 

There is an old saying that goes something to the effect of “cleanliness is next to godliness”, and as can be the case from time to time, some folks think that this saying is scriptural, even though it is not. What Jesus reminds us in today’s scripture lesson is that it isn’t always about being clean, but it is about living in a way that honors God.

We are now in the second week of our sermon series about finding pieces of scripture that speak to us in the rapid pace of the Gospel of Mark. Last week we focused on Jesus calling even the most unlikely of folks to follow him and how we need to be forming relationships with folks outside of the Church in order to share the Good News. 

This week, we again find Jesus in a conversation between his disciples and the religious leaders of the day. The topic before them - cleanliness. In ancient times, religious leaders had two things that they held in balance. The first was the written word of Scripture. In order to be a religious leader, you had to go through years of studying the Scriptures. But they also had the oral tradition. Remember for quite a length of time, the Scripture wasn’t written down like it is today, and certainly folks didn’t have Scripture lying around their homes, like we do today. Instead, you got to know the word of God as it was handed down - hearing the stories of the faith about Noah, Abraham, Moses and so many others in homes and around campfires. It was how faith was taught - not by reading but by hearing. 

Something that emerged through holding oral tradition and written Scripture together was a tradition - practical applications of what had been taught. We see a great example of this in today’s scripture lesson  - as the religious leaders were talking about throughly washing hands before eating, washing food items from the market before you eat them, and washing the things you eat from and with. How this probably emerged was from the scripture around ritual cleaning, which often existed to prevent the spread of disease, and traditions emerged to help keep people clean around things like food. 

Often the religious leaders get a bad rap for forming traditions, but let’s be honest, Church, we’ve done it as well. Traditions often are reflections of what we value as congregations. One congregation I served had several traditions around patriotic holidays. Does the Bible say anything specific about this? No. Because it wasn’t really on the Bible’s radar. But the congregation interpreted scripture about praying for our leaders and had traditions emerge including what songs were sung at what times of the year and who was invited to preach on the Fourth of July weekend. That was their tradition for their particular context that emerged from their interpretation of scripture.

Jesus’s problem today is not with tradition itself. The problem emerges when we forget a.) where our traditions come from and b.) try to make traditions as important as scripture. In the words of Jesus “you abandon the commandments of God and hold to human tradition.” Ouch.

One of the questions I ask the most when arriving at a new church is “why?” Why can be very informative because it helps me understand what each church does for special services, but it also gets to the root of why we do the things we do. What our traditions are and what they mean to us. 

Jesus skips right past the why question with the religious leaders, but I think the intent is the same. He wants them to think through why they have so many traditions around washing and cleanliness. But he also wants to point out a much deeper heart issue in their life - they have made the tradition as important as the Scripture. They focused so much on the rules around how to do something, they had forgotten the why.

This scripture passage is found right between two massive feeding events that happen in the Gospel of Mark - on the one side the feeding of the 5,000 and on the other the feeding of the 4,000. As we saw last week who you ate with really mattered in ancient culture, and we can assume that the religious leaders aren’t happy. So they are trying to catch the disciples slipping up so they can start to get the disciples (and Jesus) to act the way they want them to act. But Jesus sees right through that and calls they hypocrites - actors or pretenders, those who are going through the motions but have forgotten the intention.

Let’s be honest, most traditions grow out of good intentions. It’s a human expression of an important value. But we cannot let our human traditions become more important to us then God! Sometimes our social customs become barriers to God’s intentions and then we have a real problem. In the Church world I call this the issue of “we’ve always done it that way.” Powerful words that we sometimes use as a barrier when God is calling us to do something new or we don’t particularly want to live into the Word of God. It becomes a lot easier to fall back on tradition then to ask the hard questions about why we have the tradition in the first place and if our tradition still honors God the best way we know how. 

Jesus is taking this idea of clean and unclean and uses to it to teach those around him that it isn’t what’s outside that can make us unclean so much as what is inside - our heart and our intentions. He is essentially asking is your heart more focused on keeping the status quo or honoring God, because sometimes you can’t do both. 

Brothers and sisters the same question can be asked of us - are we more focused on not changing and keeping our traditions or honoring God? Sometimes there are wonderful moments when we can do both, but sometimes God is calling us to set our traditions aside in order to live into the mission of the Kingdom of God in our current context. Is the intention of our heart to truly follow God wherever God is leading? Or are we so caught up in the way that we do things, that we are missing the very presence of God?

Hear me out, friends, traditions can be good things. But when we pour more time and energy into keeping our traditions then spreading the Word of God we are missing the point. When more of our resources go into maintaining the way we like things then listening to to the voice of God, we miss the point. When it is more about the way we’ve always done things then honoring God, right here and now, we are missing the point. Let us be known as the church the follows the Spirit and listens to God’s promptings. Let us be known, above, all as people who honor God.

Amen. 

The Gospel of Mark: Follow Me Mark 2: 13-17

The Gospel of Mark is perhaps the most fast-paced of the recollections of Jesus. It is almost as if Jesus knows that his time on life is limited time on this earth and he wants to make the most of each moment. Already before we enter into today’s scripture in the chapter 2 of the gospel, Jesus has been baptized, tempted, called his first disciples, taught in the synagogue, healed folks, and taught throughout the country side. 

Sometimes with the rapid pace of the Gospel of Mark we can miss the beauty of what is happening and how it effect us, here, today. For the next three weeks we are going to engage the Gospel of Mark together, sinking into smaller passages. Today we pick up in the second chapter of the Gospel with the call of Levi to discipleship.

When Jesus called the first disciples, back in the first chapter of Mark, they were fisherman. Not exactly the most high up of occupations at the time. Simon, Andrew, James, and John would have had some education about the scriptures, but because they were on the boat that day, we can assume that they were rejected from going to further education at some point. So they entered into the trade of their kin, fishing on the sea. 

While fishermen would not have been the most high up occupation, tax collectors, like Levi (who Jesus calls to follow him next) were just despised. They were seen as being apart from the Jewish people, an arm of the Roman government. If that wasn’t bad enough the occupation of tax collector had a reputation that went with it for ripping people off - charging more for folks taxes then what Rome issued, thus getting wealthy at the expense of other people who couldn’t afford it. 

We live in a mindset it today’s world that we want the absolute best to fill positions - at works, in the community, anywhere there are volunteers. But here is Jesus in the Gospel of Mark, not going to the synagogues to find the people who like him, at the age of twelve, asked deep questions, knew scripture instead and out and followed the religious rules and regulations to a ’t’. No, he is going down to the docks and picking out people who didn’t make it the whole way through religious education and then going to the tax collecting booth and asking this man who was probably known more by words such as “liar”, “cheat”, and “robber” then by his name, Levi son of Alphaeus. What in the world is Jesus doing?

Jesus, I think is not picking the best as the world may define them, but the best people to follow him. The people that he would later use to proclaim his message to the very end of the world.

But the problem we face is that even here in chapter 2, pretty early in Jesus’s earthly ministry, the folks watching what Jesus is doing are missing the point. Jesus’s ministry in chapter 1 really starts in the synagogue when he enters and teaches - so you have some folks wandering if Jesus is going to be the next great prophet or teacher, coming into the synagogue to proclaim the word of God to those who already believe they got it all together. Then as many people started to hear about his ministry they realized that he also had the authority and power to heal, so they start to bring their sick to Jesus in droves, so folks started to think that was what Jesus was all about, offering physical healing. 

But then Jesus does this thing in today’s scripture passage and calls a tax collector to follow him and then sits down to eat with him and a bunch of other sinners. Now people are getting upset. This isn’t what they though this ministry of Jesus would be all about. They thought it would in “the right places” like synagogue, and that he would associate with “the right people”, blessing what they are already doing, and that he would heal some people on the side, and that everything would be good. 

Instead, Jesus is telling them that what he really came to do was offer complete healing, healing for the sin sick soul, and that the healing that has taken place so far is only a sign of the larger mission, to bring people to God to receive forgiveness and turn their lives around. And that, brothers and sisters made people uncomfortable.

In fact, that mission of Jesus can still make people uncomfortable today. I was at a training once where the speaker was talking about how Christians miss the point sometimes of what it means to be a follower of Jesus. Sometimes we want to spend all of our time in church buildings, where we can be with people who are like us, apart from the world. And we want our pastors to spend the majority of their time on us - visiting, counseling, drafting sermons that are for us. But if we are truly going to model the mission and ministry of Jesus, we as Christians and our religious leaders need to be spending less time with people like us, and more time out with folks who do not yet know Jesus, meeting them where they are at.

After this meeting, I left and started to think about how I spend my time, and who I encounter on most days, and I started to be incredibly intentional about making sure I was in places where I could talk to non-Christians. I would go to coffee shops to write my sermons. I would offer prayer for folks in the local pub. I taught Bible studies at the University, where I interfaced with a lot more students who weren’t quite sure about this Jesus thing then those who would consider themselves Christians. Some folks got it. They realized that I needed to be spending time in the community so I could meet folks who didn’t yet know Jesus and invite them to come and see what Jesus is all about. And because of that, some of those folks who got it started to think about who they spent their time with and how they could interact with people who were searching and didn’t know Jesus yet, too. But a lot more people didn’t get it. They wanted a pastor who was there all the time for them, instead of out talking to folks who may never come inside of their buildings. They wanted the folks who were already here to come first.

That is exactly what the religious leaders wanted as well, from Jesus. They wanted someone they could contain and control to the “right places and right people”. They wanted Jesus to interact with the acceptable and the well, instead of realizing that just by raising the question of “why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?” they probably had some sin sick souls that were in need of the healing that Jesus was offering as well. 

Brothers and sisters, today’s passage is a challenge to all of us. It asks, first and foremost, if we are aware of the healing that we need in our souls? Because the truth is, friends, that as much as we may be able to project to folks around us that we have it all together, Jesus know the true state of our hearts. He knows where we are sick with sin. And he has come to offer us forgiveness and new life, but we have to realize that we are in need first. We need to humble ourselves enough to invite Jesus to come into our lives. 

Second, we need to get out - to get out of our comfort zones, to get out of hanging out mostly with Christians, to get out into the places where people are in the world so we can form relationships where we can tell people about Jesus. Because we care about them. Because Jesus cares about them. Because this is what the ministry of Jesus is all about - not coming for those who are already well, but for those who are in need of healing. And because when we stop going where Jesus would go, we’ve stopped being the church. Let us reclaim being the church of Jesus Christ in the world! Amen.