The trap of comparison. September 23, 2018 The Rev. David M. Stoddart

Mark 9:30-37

The Indian writer Awdhesh Singh posted an interesting opinion piece online a couple of years ago. He begins with a story:

A man saw an elephant tied with a tiny rope to its legs. And this elephant didn’t make any attempt to break free even though it could. The man asked a trainer why the elephant, who is so powerful, doesn’t attempt to break away. The trainer explained: “When they were very young and much smaller, we used the same size of rope to tie them and, at that age, it was enough to hold them. As they grew up, they were conditioned to believe they cannot break away. They believe the rope can still hold them, so they never try to break free.”

Awdhesh Singh goes on to say:

This is precisely the case of all civilized human beings.

When you are a small child and you start going to school, you are told to score better marks than your classmates. You are awarded and appreciated when you are better than others and punished and reminded when you perform poorer. You are gradually conditioned by your parents, teachers, and society to be better than others to get their approval. Soon your mind is so conditioned that you start believing that:

●        Getting high marks is better than getting low marks

●        Having more girlfriends/boyfriends is better than having less or none

●        Earning more money is better than earning less

●        Living in a bigger house is better than living in a smaller house

●        Driving a bigger car is better than driving a smaller car

●        Having more friends is better than having fewer friends

Soon this habit of comparison goes so deep into your mind that you don’t even try to challenge it or break it, even though you find all the comparisons not only meaningless but actually the source of all your misery. Only a truly enlightened person . . . can break this spell woven around them. Most ordinary people are so tied to their habit of comparison that they refuse to get freedom from it and even pass on this habit to the next generation.

Indeed. Human nature hasn’t changed much over the ages. Life in first century Galilee was certainly very different from life in 21st century America, but Mark’s Gospel describes a scene that could have happened an hour ago right out in the gathering area. Despite everything that Jesus has taught them and modeled for them, the disciples still don’t get it: they are comparing themselves to each other and trying to determine who is the greatest. Is this giving them joy? Nope: they’re arguing about it. The discussion is no doubt fueling anxiety and insecurity. And shame: when Jesus asks them about it, they can’t even admit to it. They are trapped in a mindset that produces misery, but they either don’t want to escape it or don’t know how.

I talk to lots of people, and I can testify that lots of people still compare themselves to others. And social media does not help us here: people compare their jobs, their children, their homes, their vacations, the dinners they cook, the clothes they buy — pretty much anything and everything. I am struck by how often this comes up in my conversations with parishioners and others, and how unhappy it often makes them. So many people are like that elephant: they’re tied up, and they don’t know how to break free — they don’t even realize that they can break free.

In this Gospel, Jesus, a truly enlightened person, says that if we want to be first of all, then we must be last of all. But we need to be careful in how we hear his metaphorical language. He is not suggesting that we replace the race to the top with an equally competitive race to the bottom. You know: “I’ll be the humblest person ever, a lot more humble than my friends, and that way I’ll really be the greatest!” Such thinking obviously misses the point. Jesus is not replacing one race with another: he’s calling us to drop out of the race altogether. In last week’s Gospel, Jesus urged us to take up our own cross and follow him. He told us if we want to save our lives, we must lose our lives. He clearly does not mean we have to literally be crucified like he was. No: when he tells us to take up our cross, he means stuff like not comparing ourselves to others. Giving that up would be a real death that leads to new and better life. It’s no accident that this scene today follows right after Jesus tells his followers to take up their cross and follow him.

Now, I have been formed by this culture as much as anyone. I know personally how insidious and detrimental the comparison game can be. I also know there is a way out, and that we actually don’t have to play the game. Wise people have taught me and shown me that Jesus speaks the absolute truth here. I love being a priest, for example. I’m sure there are better preachers than I am and better rectors. I’m sure there are priests who have gifts I do not have. And I’m sure it doesn’t matter. What matters is that I be myself and use the gifts I do have with love and faith. And that’s true for all of us. Each one of you is a unique combination of talents, personality, and experiences: no one can do you like you can. No one. What matters is not how you compare to others — such comparisons are ultimately meaningless — but how you be yourself. Only when we are truly being ourselves, being real, that the Holy Spirit can flow through us to bless others and fill us with joy and peace as we do so. Jesus did not teach and die and rise again so that we could be “more than or less than” anyone else: God did not pour the Holy Spirit into us so that we could live in comparative hell. Christ came to give us abundant life, and we should not settle for anything less. Jesus says, You shall know the truth, and the truth will make you free (John 8:32). Here’s the truth: it doesn’t matter how you compare to others. And comparing yourself will never lead to joy or peace. Cut the rope and take the first steps toward freedom. The greatest people in the Kingdom of God are the ones who have stopped comparing themselves to others at all. Their greatness lies in the sheer happiness of being fully themselves in communion with God. That’s where our greatness will lie as well.

Letting go. September 16, 2018 The Rev. Kathleen M. Sturges

Mark 8:27-38

“I have some good news and some bad news,” said the small engine pilot to his three passengers. “The bad news is the plane is going to crash.  The good news is that we have parachutes aboard.  But there’s more bad news, there are only three parachutes for the four of us.”  As the pilot went on to explain that the authorities would expect him to make a full report of the situation he quickly slipped on one of the parachutes, gave the shocked passengers a thumbs up, and jumped.  Moments later, one of the three passengers stood up and declared that as an extremely intelligent person, the world desperately needed his wisdom and great learning.  So he grabbed a pack and disappeared out into the air.  Which left the remaining two passengers, a priest and a boy scout, on their own as the  plane continued to careen towards the ground.  “You go,” the priest said, “I’ve lived a long, full life and you have your life ahead of you.  Take the last parachute and save yourself.”  “Oh, not to worry,” said the boy scout with a grin on his face, “turns out that Mr. Intelligent just grabbed my backpack.”

In our reading from the gospel of Mark today Jesus has just asked the question, “Who do you say that I am?”  And Peter responds by grabbing what he thinks is parachute and takes a flying leap of faith with his reply, “You are the Messiah!”  Peter is absolutely right.  Jesus is indeed the long-awaited Messiah.  However, he is totally wrong about what that means.  In Peter’s mind the Messiah has one primary job - to save the Jewish people from the oppression of the Roman government and thereby restore Israel to its former glory.   But Jesus has other, bigger plans.  The Messiah will “undergo great suffering...be rejected...and be killed, and after three days rise again.”  And upon hearing this, what sounds like very bad news, Peter’s Messiah-styled parachute transforms into a useless backpack stuffed full of misguided expectations that have no power to save.

But all is not lost.  Though it’s not exactly what Peter has in mind, nonetheless, God’s Messiah is at work in the world bringing salvation and healing and wholeness - not through brute force, but through love.  A love that is so powerful and full of life that it even conquers death.   This is the good news for Peter and us all.

Sometimes, though, good news can sound like bad news, for Peter’s not the only one who clings to false backpacks thinking that they are saving parachutes.  Every Sunday together we all take a leap of faith by proclaiming that Jesus is God’s Messiah.  And, like Peter, we have certain ideas about what that means.  We may not have visions of Jesus overthrowing governments, but our ideas about God’s Messiah often look somewhat like a modern day superhero swooping in to save the day – to cure a disease, to mend a relationship, to provide a job, to stop an addiction, to fix whatever problem is at hand in a quick and decisive way.  When God doesn’t intervene the way we think God should we can feel as desperate as if we are falling from a plane without a proper parachute. 

And it is in such times as these that Jesus tells us, for our own sakes, to let go.  Let go of whatever we are holding onto in our lives – the backpacks chock full of expectations, agendas, hurts, fears, anger, even our need to control.  It has no power to save.  Let go, because "if any want to become my followers,” says Jesus, “let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.  For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.”  For when we let go, then we can more fully experience what has always been true.  That what keeps us safe and saved is not what we are holding onto but who is holding onto us.  We are always held and embraced by God’s love that has the power to save in any circumstance. 

This is what Jesus invites us to be a part of – God’s plan of salvation – by following his way of love.  Love that is more powerful than anything else – which I was reminded of a few weeks ago by one of our parishioners.  This person had just begun a new chapter in his life: kindergarten.  And one of the first assignments given to his class was for each student to imagine that they were a superhero.  Alright, so he imagined being a superhero and how cool it would be.  Then teacher asked everyone to pick one superpower they would possess as they took their place among the pantheon of superheros and to draw it.  Now I wasn’t in the class, but my guess is that most of the kids came up with the typical powers – the ability to fly or to be super strong or super fast or be able to disappear and then reappear.  All cool things.  But this young boy didn’t choose any of those.  Instead he got to work and drew a big star in red and blue markers.  In the middle of the star he made a smiley face (because superheroes should be happy, don’t you think?) and under the smiley face in the middle of the star was a heart.  What was his superpower?  Sharing love with people.  Of all the powers to choose from in this boy’s imagination, he recognized that love and the ability to share it was the most powerful of all.  Love was his superpower: love is his superpower.

And it’s ours, too, as we let go and let it flow in us and through us.  Although not the traditional kind, Jesus is our superhero who shows us a love  that is so powerful and so mighty that it is willing to undergo suffering, rejection, and even death so that in the end all pain, all struggle, all loss has no power and, parachute or not, we are all saved.  There’s no bad news only good news.  The good news of God’s great love known to us in Jesus the Messiah.

Included in God's mercy. September 9, 2018 The Rev. David M. Stoddart

Mark 7:24-37

We are all familiar with aphorisms, those terse little gems of folk wisdom that get passed down from one generation to the next. They include sayings like, “A bulldog can whip a skunk, but sometimes it’s not worth it;” “Anyone who doesn’t think there are two sides to an argument is probably in one;” “If at first you don’t succeed, skydiving is not for you.” The Israelites had plenty of such sayings: the Book of Proverbs is filled with them. And Jesus is probably quoting one in our Gospel today: “Don’t take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” That could be applied in a number of ways, but in this context it seems to say: “Take care of your own before you take care of others.” People don’t like this passage. Whenever it comes up, someone invariably tells me that Jesus is being mean. I understand how you could think that, but we really can’t know that. The story does not describe the look on his face or the tone of his voice. We don’t know if he’s smiling or frowning, if his approach is teasing or harsh. Mark doesn’t add a smiling face emoji to help us out here. The only thing we can be certain of is that Jesus is not surprised. He can’t be: he’s in the city of Tyre. He’s left Galilee and gone north to Syria, into one of the great ports of the ancient world. It was from Tyre that Phoenician traders explored the entire Mediterranean Sea and beyond, as far as Britain. And it was a major commercial hub, populated not only by Syrians and Phoenicians, but Romans, Greeks, and people of other nationalities as well  It was, in other words, Gentile Central, not the kind of place a good Jewish boy would go to stay pure. So it is not shocking when a Syrophoenician woman comes up to Jesus: he’s surrounded by Syrophoenicians and Gentiles of all stripes. He obviously went there for that reason.

What would have been shocking for the disciples with him was the way he cared for that woman. She wants her daughter healed of a demon; Jesus quotes that adage; the woman replies, Even the dogs eat the children’s crumbs, and Jesus is delighted. Apparently he has gone into Gentile territory to make that very point. The Israelites were keen on using circumcision, purity laws, and food regulations to stay separated from “dirty” Gentiles, with the idea that God clearly favors morally upright, religiously observant Jews over all others. But over and over again, Jesus says, Not so! He not only teaches that God makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous (Matthew 5:45): he lives it. Lepers and prostitutes? They’re acceptable. Tax collectors and Roman soldiers? They’re included. The woman caught in adultery and the criminal crucified next to him? They’re forgiven. Human beings want to draw lines and establish limits: someone has to be excluded, someone has to go to hell. Right? But Jesus will have none of it: he crosses every line and violates every boundary. There is no limit to God’s love: everyone is included in God’s mercy. No wonder they killed him! He threatened everything. But after they crucify him, he blows the stone door off of that tomb, leaving it empty and showing that not even death itself will curtail God’s love. We can build all the walls we want; we can hate and kill all the people we want, but God’s mercy will not be limited and it will not be stopped. In the end, the Kingdom will come, and it will include everyone who wishes to be in it. Everyone. No exceptions.

The implications of this are manifold and far-reaching. It obviously shapes, or should shape, the way we understand and treat immigrants and foreigners, the way we interact with people of other races and religions, with anyone who is different than we are. But I don’t want to go there right now. I want to stay with this story. When I first encountered this passage decades ago, I heard it from the outside, like I was watching this scene unfold before me, maybe the way Jesus’ disciples watched it. Whatever I felt about it, I was reacting to how Jesus treated this foreign woman. But over the years, my point of view has changed. I can no longer hear this story from the outside. That woman is me, and I am that woman. It took me awhile to get there because I’m an educated white male in a system that is rigged in my favor: it would be easy to view her plight from some safe, objective distance. I did that when I was 27; now that I’m 57, I just can’t. The more I have come to see and understand my own brokenness and need, the more I have struggled with the unavoidable pain of living, the more I know that I am just like her. She has no claim on Jesus other than the most basic claim of all: she’s hurting and she needs help. She is completely dependent on his love and mercy. And so am I. And so are you.

Growing in faith inevitably means dropping all our defenses and our pretenses and accepting the truth: we are all sinful and flawed human beings who are precious in the eyes of God. I’ve said it before: we are all broken people being loved into wholeness. Like that woman in this story we all depend on the unlimited love of God, on a mercy that will not be contained or constrained by anything. We resist that at times: I’ve listened to people tell me that if everyone gets mercy, then they’ll just take advantage of it and abuse it. And no doubt that will happen sometimes. But in my experience the people who do the most harm and cause the most destruction are not the people who have been shown mercy. The greatest damage is done by those who have never experienced mercy themselves, and don’t know how to give it to others. We cannot share what we do not have. If we are going to convey the Good News of God’s limitless love and mercy to a hurting world, we need to let ourselves experience that love and mercy in our own personal lives and realize to the core of our being how much we all depend upon it every single moment.  

And if we let that sink in, then maybe we can actually understand the end of this Gospel. The Syrophoenician woman says that even dogs deserve to eat the crumbs that fall from the table, but when it’s all over, she doesn’t get the crumbs: she gets the whole feast. Her daughter is healed and made whole.  There are no second-class citizens in the Kingdom Jesus proclaims. The unlimited love and mercy of God are poured out equally on everyone, regardless of whether they deserve it or not, because no one deserves it . . . and everyone gets it. Everyone. Even me. Even you.

Hypocrisy. September 2, 2018 The Rev. Kathleen M. Sturges

Mark 7:1-8,14-15,21-23 & James 1:17-27

The church is full of hypocrites.  Have you ever heard that before?  One former church member boasted to his priest one day, “I never go to church anymore."  To which the priest calmly replied.  “Yes, I’ve noticed that.”  “Well, just so you know,” the ex-parishioner continued, “it’s because there are so many hypocrites there.”  "Oh, don't let that keep you away," replied the priest with a smile, "there's always room for one more." 

It’s good for the soul to be able to poke fun at ourselves once in a while.  Sadly, though, it’s not a joke that the Church as a whole and those of us who attend have a reputation of being hypocritical - saying one thing but doing another.  Now for Jesus this is no laughing matter.  In fact, Jesus reserves his sharpest criticism and most pointed words for hypocrites - who turn out to be the most “religious” people of his time, the Pharisees and the scribes.  And it’s all too easy for us to point fingers, distancing ourselves from those types of people saying, “Yeah Jesus, we’re with you, those Pharisees and scribes are rotten people.”  But really were they so bad?  And are we really so different?

Here’s the presenting problem - some of Jesus’ disciples are not properly washing their hands before eating which raised the collective eyebrow of the Pharisees and the scribes.  This has nothing to do with hygiene, but everything to do with faithfulness.  For you see in God’s law priests serving in the temple were supposed to wash their hands before entering the holy place or offering sacrifices.  The Pharisees, who by the way were on the liberal side of the religious spectrum, taught a more inclusive even democratic approach to the practice of their faith.  It was not right, they said, that cherished and special rituals be monopolized by the priests.  Every Jew could (and should) honor God in their daily life.   So it goes to reason that the Pharisees taught that it wasn’t just God’s priests who needed to wash their hands before doing holy work, but all of God’s people should wash their hands before meals as a way of making mealtime sacred and to serve as a reminder that every aspect of life is under God.   Which all sounds good in theory, yes?

But these efforts to live faithful lives and to guide others to do so as well ended up backfiring.  The presenting problem - to wash or not to wash - was not the real problem here.  The real problem was that the “tradition of the elders” (like ritual hand washing) had ceased to be a means of drawing people closer to God but instead had become an instrument used to divide, judge, and separate God’s people from God and from each other.  The Pharisees and the scribes were saying they were serving God yet their actions were working against God’s purposes.  No surprise that Jesus called them hypocrites and said, “This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.  [They] abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.”

The commandment of God - that’s what matters most to Jesus above all else - following, honoring, living the commandment of God.  And what is this command?  Well, when Jesus is asked that question his answer is very clear: Love.  Love God with all that you are in all that you do.  Love your neighbor.  Love yourself.  Love always seeks connection and communion.  Love is always about the good of the other.  If handwashing serves love - promotes connection, communion, another’s good - then by all means do it.  But if it works against love then it needs to go. 

So as the modern-day Christian equivalents to the Pharisees and the scribes, we - and I mean ALL of us who go to church - we need to ask ourselves what is it that we get hung up on - the need to be right, the fear of change, the politics of the day - that it gets in the way of love?  When do we honor God with our lips but keep our hearts distant?  And what ways do we divide, judge, and separate and simply forget God’s commandment?  Acknowledging our hypocrisy is not an easy thing to do, but Jesus doesn’t challenge us in this way to hurt but to heal. 

Because God’s people are intended to be the kind of people who everyone is drawn to and wants to be around.   Yet whether we are talking about Pharisees and scribes or Christian church members, many in the world feel just the opposite.  We are the ones to avoid.  Which means we’ve got some work to do.  And our reading from the book of James today provides some very good guidance on where to start.   “My beloved,” James says, “ let everyone be quick to listen [and] slow to speak.”  If we seek to live out more fully God’s commandment to love then people probably don’t need to hear more from us.  We need to listen better to them.  A wise person once put it this way: You never really love someone until you get to know them, and once you get to know them, it’s really hard not to love them.  But to get to know them, you need to be with them and hear what they have to say. 

This universal need that all people have to be heard and known and loved was highlighted to me this week when I learned about a global social project called Urban Confessional.  It’s people from all walks of life who volunteer their time to stand in public places holding a sign that reads, “Free Listening.”  The primary goal of these volunteers is to listen to anyone who wants to talk - without passing judgement or even offering advice.  And you know what?  People stop to talk.  Some even stand in line just for the chance to share their story with someone who will really listen.  It may not be labeled as such but these Free Listening moments are encounters with love.  Love that is quick to listen and slow to speak.  It is God’s love and when it’s offered, people can’t help but be drawn.     

Now contrary to popular opinion, I say that the church is not full of hypocrites.  What the church is full of is people doing the best they can as they seek to know the love of God and share it with others.  It’s not an easy task.  We all do it imperfectly - sometimes that even takes the form of saying one thing and doing another.  Jesus sees it all, yet loves us still.  That’s the Good News that we - whether we are in church or not - need to hear and know.  We are loved.   There are no exceptions, even the hypocrites are included which means that we need make sure there’s always room for one more.