Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity Mark 8:27-end James 3:1-12‘Who do you think you are?’ There’s a television series by that name. Each episode explores the ancestry of a well-known person, in order to find out where they come from. It can be quite revealing; sometimes the stories are sad, in other cases there is reason for joy. But it is something that grasps us: a family tree, especially if it is drawn up for the first time, gives people a rooting and answers certain questions. We find family trees in the Bible too. They put the stories in context, a bit like the background of a landscape painting, for instance. The part of Mark’s Gospel that we have reached today, does that too. Here, the story turns: from various healing and other miracles that Jesus has performed, the focus now narrows down on Jesus’ identity and the journey he is to take towards the cross. As Peter’s declaration of Jesus being the Messiah and Peter’s subsequent misunderstanding makes clear, there is expectation among Jesus’ followers but not necessarily the correct understanding of what the Messiah looks like. The general public’s perception of the Messiah was that he would be a military leader, who would chase the enemy away, rebuild and cleanse the Temple, and bring in God’s justice in Israel and to the world. In this image of the Messiah, he was to be an agent of God who would bring in the kingdom – that included sorting out Israel’s mess and putting the Gentiles in their place. But Jesus redefined this picture. His ministry had already spoken of a new agenda according to God’s plan, and although it gave rise to some fierce opposition as well as loyalty, this was the path that Jesus was going to take. His explanation, often so cryptic that even his friends didn’t understand, now finally comes home: Jesus is the Messiah; he is just not the kind of Messiah that they had expected. The Kingdom of God is about justice and mercy and all the things that Jesus had done so far were signs of it finally breaking in. What the disciples had not realised before, though, was that Jesus is not just a prophet – he is also the King.Now when Peter voiced this new insight, Jesus again said something that might not be easy to understand: ‘he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him’. This pressing demand had a reason, though. It was both politically and religiously dangerous to claim that Jesus is the true King of Israel and the long-expected heir in the line of king David. It would make people suspicious, not least Herod Antipas, who ruled at that moment and who didn’t like to give way. It’s funny in a way: the disciples had not expected that the Messiah would be a divine redeemer; they were looking for a king. Now that they think they have found him, they are not to say a word about it; how frustrating! But also, how exciting! And in their excitement, they could easily spill the beans when it was most inconvenient in God’s plan. Hence the stern demand that they don’t mention it to anyone. What’s more, Jesus then begins to teach them the true nature of his Messiahship, to undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days to rise again. And Peter won’t have any of it; it doesn’t fit into his picture of the Messiah at all. It’s a hard time for Peter: first he is commended and then he is rebuked in the most severe terms. A bit of a roller-coaster ride for him. But it is so important that Jesus will be able to continue the journey of his salvation work unhindered, and ultimately to reveal his identity to the whole world.It is not just the question of ‘who do you think you are?’ for him. He knows who he is and what he is about. The question is, rather, who we think Jesus is. Is he ‘just a prophet’ for us, a nice person, like Superman, who should simply turn on some magic to change the world? Or is he the King of kings, and Lord of lords, who has come to save us and give us true hope and a future? The eye-witness account in the Gospels should tell us. Amen.
Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity Mark 7:24-end Isaiah 35:4-7aWhen Jesus went away for a while after saying and doing some tricky things, he might not have had a somewhat strange encounter in mind. Or might he? Mark’s account says that he went to the region of Tyre, and that he didn’t want anyone to know he was there. But he couldn’t escape notice. A woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit heard about him soon enough and came and bowed down at his feet. Now the thing about this was that the woman was Syrophoenician, Greek, a Gentile, so not Jewish. The insulting name of the Jews for Gentiles was ‘dogs’, and what the Gentiles said about the Jews was equally unpleasant. And although Jesus challenges her in response to her plea on behalf of her daughter, by saying that ‘it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs’, she uses it to her advantage. She replies, ‘Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.’ Jesus is pleased and commends her for her answer and grants her what she has asked for. Now we may think that this was just a bit of banter going on and some clever correcting and rebuking both ways. We may even think Jesus was being a bit harsh and out of character. But then we miss the point. God’s plan of salvation was for the whole world but this was to happen through the Jewish people and then to reach the Gentiles after Jesus had completed his unique assignment. The ‘food or bread’ of salvation that Jesus was going to offer had to be given in the context of Israel’s history, and then the Gentiles would be able to profit. The woman seems to get it or in any case, she shows great faith. In what follows is another moment of healing, when Jesus returned from there and went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. A deaf man was brought to him who had impediment in his speech; and they begged him to lay his hand on him. He does so in private, away from the crowd. This healing of a deaf-mute is symbolic of a general restoration of hearing and speech that confirms the movement of renewal and that the Kingdom of God has extended to the peoples around Israel. It is resonant of the prophecy in Isaiah 35 that says: ‘Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; etc.’ It is about the long-awaited rescue plan of God coming near.These two incidents are a reminder that Jesus wasn’t just a good person, going around to be helpful. Everything he says and does has meaning. Some of his words were certainly controversial and upset the established religious authorities as well as some of his hearers. But then, we shouldn’t see Jesus as a cosy, meek and mild problem-solver; he had something much more important to do and only a certain amount of time. His calling to be the Messiah would take him to the cross and there was too much at stake to allow himself to be distracted from his ultimate task. And we should not be distracted either. We too have a role to play as bearers of the Gospel, the Good News of Jesus Christ. What Mark had written up for all of Jesus’ followers had been seen by the disciples and passed on as of the utmost importance. The healing message of the Gospel was to spread as widely as possible and that included the wiping away of old taboos. Worries about what was clean and what was unclean had to go. The dogs under the table would become children of God, just like the first – Jewish – disciples. At the top of the cross these words would be written: The King of the Jews. He is Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour of the world. Amen.
Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity Mark 7:1-8; 14-15; 21-23 James 1:17-endAppearances can be so deceptive. And how we like to fool ourselves into thinking that we are always everything we claim to be…! Last week I spoke about fashion, not just with reference to clothes, but also in terms of behaviour. And behaviour is what Jesus is talking about in the passage from Mark’s Gospel; and also James, in the first chapter of his letter, speaks about that. The main issue is the discrepancy between what goes on inside a person and their outward appearance; they don’t always add up! It’s only human, we might say, when we say something that is not totally in accordance with what we do. As the saying goes: do as I say, not as I do. And we all make mistakes. But how does that relate to the Christian life? After all, our journey with Christ through life is a process of change. When we accept Jesus as our Saviour, we know that we are accepted as we are, but God loves us too much to leave us like that – he wants the very best for us and that includes a change of heart in the right direction. God, by his Spirit, works on us, so that we grow into strong, righteous and dependable people, when we have been weak and unreliable before. He is a true life-changer! The figure of speech that God uses in the Bible is about clothes: we need to be dressed anew, in clean robes that reflect our new status as children of God. This is not about our outward appearance, but about the heart. That’s another kind of fashion than the one we tend to think of!In Mark’s Gospel reading for today, Jesus is challenged by the scribes and Pharisees about the disciples eating without first washing their hands. It’s a good custom, of course, to wash hands before touching food, and we do well to observe hygiene; but in the case of the Pharisees, they tended to make a bit of a show of it. Which is why Jesus answers by quoting the prophet Isaiah, saying: ‘Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written, “This people honour me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.”’ For Jesus knew what was in their hearts and their inner motives, and their behaviour did not match their words or outward appearance. He then called the crowd again and said to them: ‘Listen to me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.’ When the disciples ask him later what he meant by that, Jesus explains: ‘Whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile, since it enters, not the heart but the stomach, and goes out into the sewer. It is what comes out of a person that defiles, for all evil things come from the human heart.’ It is something that James also writes about in his letter, in the translation of The Message: ‘Lead with your ears, follow up with your tongue, and let anger straggle along in the rear. God’s righteousness doesn’t grow from human anger. So throw all spoiled virtue and cancerous evil in the garbage. In simple humility, let our gardener, God, landscape you with the Word, making a salvation-garden of your life.’ Wise words and helpful to remind us that our actions speak louder than our words. I like what comes a little later in James’ letter: ‘Anyone who sets himself up as religious by talking a good game is self-deceived. This kind of religion is hot air and only hot air. Real religion, the kind that passes muster before God the Father, is this: reach out to the homeless and loveless in their plight, and guard against corruption from the godless world.’ He doesn’t mince words and he goes straight to the heart of the matter, or, to the matter of the heart, as Jesus might say. It is a summary focus of the way faith works out in practical and social observance that honours God. Righteousness, then, in word and deed, when words and actions add up. That’s what wins God’s approval and helps us grow in faith. Amen.
Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity John 6:56-69 Ephesians 6:10-20I had to go through my wardrobe the other day, looking for something to wear to a party. I know, it’s great to be invited to a special event like that, but after the initial excitement comes the question: what do I wear? The question might relate to what would be fashionable, or it might be about hitting the right note as to colour or style. It can be such a trap! Fortunately, there is also such a thing as ‘vintage’, meaning anything that is ‘of an age’, and in the context of clothing between twenty and fifty years old. Now that suits me fine; no pun intended. After all, I want to look reasonably nice in what suits me, not being draped in the latest expensive but unflattering fashion. That leads me to another question: how do we decide what is really important? Not only in the context of an invitation to a party, but when it comes to the way we live our lives. That goes deeper, no doubt. And even there, in terms of life style, there is such a thing as ‘fashion’. Let’s think about it for a moment. Do we live our lives by certain principles because we know them to be right or because they are convenient or even popular? And how does the answer to that question affect our behaviour? In other words: what is the yard stick that we use to help us ‘get it right’? We are at a time in our history when we are seeing a lot of unrest in the world, economically, socially, reflected in nature, and many of these problems can be brought back to human failure. Failure, that is, to consider ‘the other’ and to understand that freedom comes with responsibility. From the very beginning, the biggest problem of humankind has been pride: the idea that we have a right to everything we want when we want it. As the story of Adam and Eve tells us, it makes us very vulnerable to the lures of the devil. And that’s another thing: Many people don’t believe that there’s something like spiritual warfare, or that there’s a struggle between good and evil. They certainly don’t personify evil and call the devil by his name, or they make a joke of it. But Jesus knew what he was dealing with. The temptation in the desert – as recorded in the other three gospels – has made that perfectly clear. As he says in today’s passage in John 6, ‘It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But among you there are some who do not believe.’ In his work, of teaching and healing and performing miracles, Jesus often speaks about the fact that it is the people’s faith that has healed them or helped them receive what they are asking for. And it seems that their faith also recognises the struggle between good and evil, God and the devil, far more easily than we do today. Now, I know that we have all the advantages of science to help us understand illness and how it can be cured in many cases. Science can be a blessing and it can be complementary to faith. But it isn’t science that will win the victory over evil. Science cannot give us love, grace, mercy, kindness and the like. In that sense, for faith to really flourish it needs to accept the Son of God and the work of salvation that he has done. As Jesus has said: ‘Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me.’ Many don’t like this and leave; they are not able to see beyond the physical and don’t appreciate the spiritual dimensions that Jesus is talking about. When Jesus asks the disciples whether they too will want to leave him like those others, because they find his teaching too hard, Simon Peter says, ‘Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.’ What an amazing statement! The Spirit of God gave Peter this insight, as Jesus had indicated. So, where do you stand? The enemies of the Christian believer are not human but spiritual, as Paul warns in Ephesians 6. Therefore, we need to wear the armour of the divine protector: the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the shield of faith and the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. So wear it. It may not be the most popular. It may not even be fashionable. But it helps you to stand in the strength of God’s power when you need it most. Amen.
