I hope this finds you well! My supervisor is on vacation to sunny, warm, Arizona - so I've been solo pastoring for the past week and a half - and all's gone well, so far! Dale will return February 8th - we're awaiting his arrival back to northwest Minnesota. Here's the sermon from this past Sunday - talking about following the reign of God amidst disbelief, rejection, and death:
Sisters and
brothers, grace to you and peace from God our Creator and God’s Son Jesus the
Christ. Amen.
Friends,
I’ll be honest with you. I struggle with this text. I struggle with what to say
– both this time around and the first time I preached on this passage from Mark
back in July at another congregation I served in. The 6th chapter of
Mark is not the promise-filled message of reconciliation that we are most often
used to hearing. Instead, there’s this. There’s rejection in a small hometown
village. There’s people being sent out two by two with almost nothing to their
name and relying on total strangers to provide complete hospitality and there’s
wiping dust off of feet if the message isn’t heard. There’s a beheading in a
musty prison and conniving behavior in the royal palace. There’s a lot going on
in this passage, and I struggle often with locating where the Gospel is found
in the face of rejection. What do we do when the communities we spend time in
spreading the Gospel don’t respond as we’d hoped? What is the price for
witnessing to the reign of God? They pay the price like this: Jesus leaves his
hometown. The disciples clean off their sandals and carry on. John the Baptist
ends up dead.
The
characters in our story for today were really only being human, as best they
know how. When Jesus pulls into his hometown of Nazarath with his disciples and
begins to teach in the synagogue and is expecting belief and adherence and
instead what he gets is “You’re just a simple carpenter”, “You’re just the son
of plain Mary”, “Where did you get this wisdom and power, Jesus?” The people
know him, you see – they’ve watched him grow up, advancing in both wisdom and
years – and he went off for a while to begin his ministry, but now he’s
returned and all the old perceptions and understandings of this once-child are
back again. They can’t get past his family; his occupation. To expect full
belief in the fact that Jesus was the Son of God would be too much right now –
so Jesus heals a few people and leaves town. The price of witnessing to the reign of God is
disbelief.
Jesus soon sends his
disciples on the way ahead of him, giving them power to do his work of casting
out demons and healing the sick. The way Jesus does this, though, is limiting –
they are to travel lightly, with almost nothing on their person, which requires
the disciples to depend fully on the hospitality of others. Their message may
or may not be received. This is “How to Be like Jesus 101” – just as Jesus
depends on his word being spread through the Spirit’s help in acceptance of
teaching and genuine hospitality, so he requires the disciples to do the same.
Jesus’ life and ministry was always risky – there is always a chance of being
caught, always a chance of not being welcomed – and he wants the disciples to
experience this. In case you aren’t received, wipe the dust off your feet and
carry on. The price of witnessing to the reign of God is rejection.
Then we turn to John the
Baptist in the prison cell. Faithfully proclaiming Christ’s coming and work for
years, baptizing people into the promises of God, here he sits – soon to be
beheaded due to a scheming palace royalty who wants nothing more than the
forerunner of Christ dead. King Herod tries to defend John – he likes the man,
you see, but is perplexed by all his talk about the law and Christ and the
Gospel – but ultimately, after promising Herodias anything she desires, has to
follow through with the execution orders. The head of John the Baptist arrives
in the banquet hall on a platter, and the scene ends with the disciples taking
John’s body away to a tomb. The price of witnessing to the reign of God is death.
The
price of witnessing to the reign of God, of proclaiming the way life should be here and now, is disbelief, rejection, and death. It’s powerful, scary
stuff, for you in the pews and for this guy up here in the pulpit. Jesus knew
this – he prayed that his cup might be taken from him if it be God’s will. Yet,
Jesus proclaimed the Gospel all the way to the cross where he bore all the sins
of humanity for our sake so that we might not only life in abundance here and
now but also life eternal in the new heaven and new earth when all things are
made new. If we have Jesus as our model, if we have Jesus who we profess to
follow, then too many times over in our churches and communities we’ve been
afraid of rejection because of our faith. Because in the face of the world
telling us that disbelief, rejection, and death are normative and the order of
the day, we have a God who is working for belief – whether it comes in the form
of Christianity, whether it takes beyond this lifetime. We have a God who is
working for acceptance – of all people from all nations and all creeds, and
above all, a God who is working for resurrection and new life that will once
and for all silence sin and death. And God’s not doing it alone – God is using
us – every one of you – to participate in this world-changing revolution. The
Spirit is moving. How will you respond? Amen.
Dean
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