Peace, All! Here's a reflection I shared last Sunday. More of a Bible Study than a sermon with stories and waving and the like. Nonetheless, I hope it's useful to some! The "three considerations" are real, I think, as we seek to follow today. If you are reading by phone, reading might be easier if you turn your phone to a horizontal position. Many thanks to Pastor Lily for trusting me to hang with her fun crew. There are some lovely folks out at Faith in Walworth, to be sure! Enjoy. Peace. ~Tom
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Dirty Feet, Hungry Places, & Counter-Kingdoms: Sermon/Study for the Seventeenth Sunday After Pentecost, 2024 | Faith Evangelical Lutheran Church, Walworth, WI
Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi, and on the way he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” And they answered him, “John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.” He asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered him, “You are the Messiah.” And he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him.
Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes and be killed and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”
~Mark 8:27-33, NRSV-UE
Good morning again, everyone.
And: “Get behind me Satan!”
[PAUSE]
And thank you Pastor Lily for leaving us with this beautiful and uplifting text from the Gospels today. Amen?
[laughter or awkward silence here]
I’m grateful for this little bit of time to share with all of you
to dig into the beautiful, sacred, holy, and complicated scriptures
and to think together about how the Spirit might be speaking through them and provoking us, in community, today.
Amen?
[PAUSE]
Here’s where I want to start:
Anytime Jesus calls somebody a name in the bible.
I hope, I think, I desire for it to be the case that, Jesus,
in his act of name-calling
isn’t just being, mean.
Amen?
But, rather, I hope, I think, I desire
for it to be the case
that something
maybe,
in that unexpected event that takes place
between Jesus and (in this case) Peter…
my hope is that something just might be trying to be said
in and through that moment
that might otherwise not have been heard.
In other words:
My hope when Jesus says something like what he says to St. Peter today,
is that something is being said that’s bigger
than just what’s-being-said.
Amen?
And that maybe that’s why the Gospel writers decided to write it down.
And to put here in teh 8th Chapter of Mark.
My hope is that something is being said that’s bigger
than just what’s being said.
And.
I actually do think that that’s what’s going on today.
And
that’s what I want to spend just a little bit of time looking at and unpacking with you all this morning.
And my plan is to do that more in the style of a Bible Study than in the style of a traditional sermon.
How does that sound to all of you?
[positive responses abound]
Great. Then let’s begin!
To help us dig in this morning, then,
I would like to offer us the following guiding question:
What’s going on–and what’s actually being said –when Jesus calls Peter, “Satan?”
What’s going on–and what’s actually being said–when Jesus calls Peter, “Satan?”
[PAUSE]
Weird enough for you all yet?
What’s going on–and what’s actually being said–when Jesus calls Peter, “Satan?”
[PAUSE]
There are a lot of places we could look for answers to this question.
Both the scriptures and history have a lot of nooks and crannies to explore and to illuminate and be illuminated by.
But, for the sake of time, I want us to consider just three in hopes that they will help us find some clarity as we engage our question.
Amen?
Amen!
Okay, then let’s do it.
PHYSICAL MOVEMENT
Our first consideration as we engage our question this morning has to do with physical movement.
And I’m not sure I can overemphasize this.
But:
in the gospel of Mark, to be a disciple, a follower, that is: to follow Jesus
really means to follow Jesus.
Jesus is on the Way somewhere in the Gospel.
Even if it’s not really clear “to where” right at the beginning.
Nonetheless, to follow Jesus, the fisherman learn, means literally
getting up,
getting out of the boat,
and leaving some stuff behind
(some of them even their family-situation)
because to follow meant to follow
and it’s hard to journey with a boat-full of stuff weighing you down.
Amen?
Amen!
From boat to boat, they now go with Jesus physically from village to village.
His movement will become known by his future followers as “The Way.”
The road.
The path.
The street.
El Camino.
Right?
To follow Jesus in the Gospel of Mark, in other words, means
to get dirty feet–to go, to travel, to walk the path of faith and hope with Jesus.
And the whole Gospel of Mark, up to this point in Chapter 8, where we’re reading from today, has been marked by such movement.
So:
physical movement.
This is consideration number one.
“To follow means to follow.”
PHYSICAL FEEDING
The second second detail of Jesus’ ministry for us to take into consideration (as we try to figure out what’s going on when Jesus calls Peter “Satan”) is related.
It is also physical.
However, it has to do not just with following, but also, with food.
With feeding.
And with feasting.
And, of course, because of that, with sharing.
And community.
And coming together.
Like this.
That is, (again) since Gospel of Mark started, when Jesus was baptized and then pushed by the Spirit into his wilderness and then also his mission,
Jesus has done a lot of things while on that “Way” of faith and hope.
Jesus has healed countless people
and exorcised a bunch of demons
and even brought the daughter of Jairus up from the dead.
Which is… incredible. And amazing. And beautiful.
Plus he’s also preached and taught and prayed and rested.
But perhaps the most significant for us today with our question–is that twice [in this Gospel-of-Mark] once in Mark 6 and then again in Mark 8…
twice,
Jesus and his followers
who were physically following him on the Way
feed first 5,000,
and then again 4,000 people–
[so about three times the population of Walworth if you count both feasts]
and, as is often mentioned,
that’s probably not counting everyone who was there.
Which is to say that, here in Mark’s Gospel, central to following Jesus,
who calls people out of boats and down the path of faith & hope,
[also…]
is love,
is sharing,
is sharing food,
or as it is said in acts,
making sure that all are able to eat and that
each has according to each one’s needs.
In other words, central to the communities that pop up around Jesus
(like this one)
is this idea of the communion of saints,
the collective,
the thing we act out every time we have communion and pass it out to each other–
that no matter how much or how little we have that morning when we show up,
at the end of the day, everybody–everybody, everybody–
who was there in that moment (and who wanted it)
gets a piece a bread and gets something to drink.
How beautiful is that?
All who want, get. And that’s what we act out in church right here at this table every week.
All who hanger are able to eat.
And that’s what we call sacred.
That’s what we call a sacrament.
That’s what we call the literal, tangible, embodied presence of Christ.
That’s what we call the presence, the Body, of God.
And so it is already here in the Gospel of Mark.
Not just inside.
But out in the world.
Where the crowds gather for good news and good food.
(^Perhaps these are the same^).
1 To follow Jesus is to follow Jesus.
2 And to follow Jesus means to follow Jesus into the hungry places so that everyone who needs to–and everyone who wants to–is able to eat.
Amen?
These are our first two considerations.
FAITH IN THE FUTURE REIGN MEANS LIFE IN A COUNTER-KINGDOM
The third thing for us to consider, is that the Gospel of Mark itself,
(again, from it’s very beginning)
has called itself the Good News of Jesus, the Son of the God.
That’s how the Gospel opens right? Those are the first words.
“This is the beginning of the Good News of Jesus, the Son of the God.”
In Greek there’s a “the” before all of the nouns.
“This is the beginning of the Good News of Jesus, the Son of the God.”
The story is later added to by Jesus when Jesus starts going around and telling people that his Father’s Kindom or “God’s Reign of Love” is near. Or nearby. Or “at hand,” it’s sometimes translated, meaning,“super close, so close you can touch it.”
And this Reign of Love, we learn pretty quickly,
this Kindom of God is what we might call a counter-Kingdom. [Or a counter-culture].
Very quickly we learn God’s Reign as Jesus envisions it is topsy-turvy, upside down.
Here, in God’s kingdom,
the first are last,
the last are first,
the hungry are fed,
the peacemakers are blessed,
[Can you imagine that?]
and the lowly are lifted from the dust.
In Other words, here, in the Reign of Love,
here where Good News is delivered about Jesus, the Christ, the Son, of the God–
well…
here (in God’s Reign among us) is really super different from the Kingdom called Rome, where Caesar is the son of the gods, and where, the good news often manifests in the crucifixion of Jesus and of messiahs, rather than in the lifting, the resurrecting, the rising up of the lowly and the last.
“God’s Reign of Love in near,” says Jesus. And it’s a heck of a lor different than this. And to be of it, to participate in it means look and think and act and behave in a way that’s different.
1 So, in the Gospel of Mark, to follow Jesus is to follow Jesus.
2 To follow Jesus means to follow Jesus into the hungry places so that everyone who needs to–and everyone who wants to–is able to eat.
3 And to have faith in the future that Jesus proclaims means to be different–live a life that’s counter-kindgom in who it values and who it seeks to lift up.
Amen?
And that’s three!
Amen?
ROCKY
And that brings us to Peter.
Peter! Arguably one of the most beloved disciples. For goodness sake, Jesus nicknamed him The Rock! Rocky. Rocky Johnson. The strong one.
The supportive one. A foundation. A “cornerstone” of so much of the ministry Jesus was about to build.
So why (to bring us back to our question)
would Jesus go and do something like calling Peter, “Satan?”
While I don’t think we can (or should) explain all of the strongness (or strength)
of that language.
I do think, considering all we’ve considered, that we have a few clues.
Amen?
I mean: in the Gospel of Mark:
to follow Jesus is to follow Jesus. Amen?
And: To follow Jesus means to follow Jesus inot the hungry places so that everyone who needs to–and everyone who wants to–is able to eat. Amen?
And: To have faith in the future that Jesus proclaims means to be different–and to live a life that’s counter-kindgom in who it values and in who it seeks to lift up. Amen?
So, When Peter, the Rock, the Strong and the Sturdy one, takes all that power and privilege that he has as Jesus’ sort-of number-one,
all that leverage he could use to lift the lowly and feed the hungry,
all that power that he could use to shepherd what he will eventually call his sheep lovingly and with a little bit of a push from behind,
When Peter takes all he has, and all he’s used to back-up his Messiah,
and, then, well, he get’s ahead of him, in front of him, in-the-Way of him, instead…
All that power that pushed from the back, all that rock that helped the disciple roll, soon became a stumbling block, a trip-wire, a barrier, instead.
In other words
(and please forgive the rhyme):
In that moment, for that moment, on the way, in the movement,
Peter became a block rather than a rock.
Rather than the rock, Peter became the block.
He became about himself rather than about the many. And so, he got in the way.
And if he would’ve stayed there, there would’ve been a lot of people who wouldn’t have been healed, who wouldn’t have followed, who likely wouldn’t have had enough to eat.
So, I think, (it’s my best guess) that Jesus gave him a little redirection.
Peter became a block rather than a rock
and Jesus helped him to reposition.
FOR US
As I read this text with you all:
I think the spiritual, community question for me, for us, this week is kinda simple.
The question is just:
Are we Following?
Not: Am I following? Remember, we do faith together. Amen?
But: Are we following? Together?
Are we on the Way of Faith and of Hope and of Love–into the hungry places, for the sake of all who hunger? Amen?
And the question is:
Who are we feasting with? And where (and with whom) might we be called to share and to feast some more? Amen?
And of course the question is:
How are we being called as Faith in Walworth, as the larger church, as people who stumble and fumble but who on our better days try to do out best to follow Jesus on the path…. How are we being called as we are, where we are, as followers of Love, to be counter-kingdom or counter-cultural–to speak up and to speak out in Love–for the sake of the least, the last, and the lost around and among us?
May these questions stir in our hearts–and, in time, stir us to move.
Amen.
[Note: the sermon actually ended differently at Faith (as we went a little of script) but this was the “first draft” on paper! Peace and love, all. ~Tom]
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