Stumbling blocks. September 27, 2021. The Rev. Kathleen M. Sturges

Mark 9:39-50

“Yeah, but…” I’m not particularly fond of that phrase. It’s often used when someone wants to passively dismiss what was just said in order to deflect the attention elsewhere. Like back in the day when my kids were young I would often hear this, “Yeah, but…” Like when I would make a request. “Please take off your muddy shoes before coming into the house.” “Yeah, but…” would come the quick reply, “brother didn’t do it!” Or to another, I’d ask to clear the table and then I’d hear, “Yeah, but… sister is not doing anything to help!” And it’s not just a strategy employed by kids. Most of us are prone to use it when we feel called out in one way or another. As we age, we may refine our approach, but the aim remains the same, that is, deflect negative attention by directing it towards someone else. 

Like in our gospel reading. It is a continuation of last week’s reading. Jesus has just discovered that his disciples have been bickering among themselves over who is greatest. And he calls them out about it. Ok, guys, listen up, if you really want to be the best, here’s the path. Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all. Jesus exposes the disciples’ misguided desire for status and ranking. It must have been pretty uncomfortable which is likely why the “Yeah, but” strategy is deployed.  “Yeah, but...” says the disciple John...we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us. Obviously, the hope is to turn the conversation away from the ways that they might be falling short and direct it towards this other guy who's been casting out demons. But Jesus doesn’t take the bait. The other guy is not the issue here. In fact, Jesus declares, whoever is not against us is for us. And with that, once again Jesus insists on pushing the boundaries, erasing the lines we draw between us and them, and enlarging the circle.

One of the key ways that boundary lines get erased and circles become larger is by taking our critical eye off of the “other guy” and what we think - or really, what we know! - is his problem and instead, looking honestly at ourselves with an eye toward how we might be creating stumbling blocks in our world. Jesus uses this language of “stumbling blocks” to call us to do some self-reflection. Now stumbling blocks are obstacles that get in people’s way and trip them up. Simply put, they are anything that makes life and faith harder than it has to be. And Jesus’ concern here is twofold: First, whether we are a stumbling block for another, especially those who have less power, less privilege, and are more vulnerable than we are - the least of these. And secondly, whether we create stumbling blocks for ourselves. ” Because as much as we’d like to think that the problems of this world, the stumbling blocks that make life harder, are all outside of us, many, if not most, are actually found within. And here are just a few: anger, fear, judgement, our need to compare ourselves to others, our need to be right, our unwillingness to listen, the assumption that we know best, pride, gossip, addiction. These, and a thousand other things like them are stumbling blocks that cause us and others to trip and sometimes even fall.

And that’s not all. Because stumbling blocks don’t just exist in individuals. Many manifest themselves in the way communities and groups operate, on a systemic level. Like in the ways that our legal system can sometimes be a stumbling block to justice for all. Or how governmental policies can create obstacles that make things harder for some to thrive. Even the Church can be a stumbling block to some who come seeking love and acceptance and find rejection and judgement instead. Like it or not, we are all parts of various systems that cause others to stumble.

Which makes it so tempting to respond with some type of, “Yeah, but…” “Yeah, but... what about the other guy, or the other group, or the other country… they are all much worse than we are!” But that’s not the issue today. In this moment Jesus calls us to stay with the hard and uncomfortable work of self-examination. And he’s dead serious about it. You can hear it in the images he uses: drowning by millstone, amputation of body parts, unquenchable fire, hell, the worm that never dies. We aren’t to take these words literally, but we are to take them seriously. And that begins with looking at ourselves and not at each other.

Yet even when we do there is no quick fix. The other day a parishioner came to me asking for prayer because she knew she was full of judgement. Specifically, she confessed, she thought everyone who chose not to get the Covid-19 vaccine was basically a “selfish idiot.” So we talked and prayed and held up to God her critical spirit along with desire that everyone be safe and protected and all the complexity that the issue holds. Now, I haven’t checked, but I suspect she still wrestles with this issue. That her judgement didn’t just disappear with a prayer. Even so, such surrender to God in humble self-awareness is the first step to dismantling stumbling blocks we create in our lives, in the lives of others, and in the world.

Because try as we may, this is not work we can do on our own. Living a Christian life is not something you do as much as something that gets done to you. As we recognize the ways we struggle and stumble and cause others to struggle and stumble too, our call is to give God permission to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. That is, to clear the path of all that is getting in the way so that boundary lines are erased and the circle is made bigger which allows all of us to experience what it’s like to fully love and be loved. So that with God’s help, those stumbling blocks may one day become building blocks of love and grace and mercy and we can truly be, in the words of Jesus, at peace with one another.  

 

Our worth is infinite. September 19, 2021. The Rev. David M. Stoddart

Mark 9:30-37

So here’s the study that Harvard researchers did. It consisted of a simple choice: Would you rather earn $50,000 a year while other people make $25,000, or would you rather earn $100,000 a year while other people make $250,000? And you can assume that the prices of all goods and services remain the same regardless of the choice you make. So what would you choose? Well, the majority of respondents said they would prefer to make $50,000 while others make $25,000. In other words, they would rather go with $50,000 less as long as they knew that they were making more than other people. Seriously. Different studies have been conducted along these same lines, and the results are always the same. In one case, people had to choose between Option A and Option B. In Option A, you are waiting in line at a movie theater and you end up being the 100,000th customer, so you get $100. In Option B, you are standing in line at a movie theater and the person in front of you is the one millionth customer and gets $1,000. But because you are next in line, you receive $150. In Option A, you get a hundred bucks. In Option B, you get a hundred and fifty bucks, but the guy in front of you gets a thousand. Which would you choose? In that study, most people chose Option A: they would rather receive less money than have someone else get more than they do.

What’s that about? Why do we need to make more than other people do? And move beyond the realm of money. The Olympics just took place this summer. You know what the Olympic motto is? Citius, Altius, Fortius — Faster, Higher, Stronger. People devote their lives to running half a second faster than anyone else, or jumping two centimeters higher. Sports teams spend billions of dollars worldwide to be better than other teams. And, of course, that just reflects the society around us. Humans constantly strive to be smarter, prettier, more talented, more successful than their neighbors. Social media just amplifies this phenomenon, as people compare their haircuts, their children, their vacations, their lives with the curated versions of other people’s lives they see online. The letter of James today warns us against envy and selfish ambition, but that’s kind of tough because so much of our consumer-driven,  advertising-drenched, image-obsessed, hyper-competitive society is based on envy and selfish ambition.  I may not be great, but if I can just be a little better than you, then I’m okay.

Or am I? In the Gospel today, Jesus talks about laying down his life for others. So the disciples are discussing the beauty of self-giving love, and wondering how they can emulate Jesus. Not! They’re arguing. And what are they arguing about? Who is the greatest? Can you imagine such a discussion? “I’m more faithful in my prayer life than you are.” “Yeah, but I’m a better preacher than you.” “I healed more people last week than you did.” “Jesus talks to me more than he talks to you.” We might feel horrified that they would actually put such thoughts into words, but we all know where they’re coming from. Honestly, how many times have you compared yourself to others? How many times have you found some kind satisfaction in convincing yourself that you are somehow better than someone else? How much time and energy have we all devoted to such nonsense? How often has it left us feeling anxious and unhappy?

The writer Flannery O’Connor wisely observed that “comparison is the thief of joy.” Comparing ourselves to others serves no healthy purpose. Whether it stokes our vanity or wounds our pride, it says that our worth and our well-being all come down to how we stack up against others. Worse, it posits that my happiness actually depends on your unhappiness. I would say that that’s no way to go through life, except that so many people do just that, without even really thinking about it. But Jesus offers us awareness — and a way out.

In our Gospel today, Jesus takes a child in his arms and talks about welcoming her. It’s an image that works on many levels. To begin with, it punctures the pride of his disciples by reminding them that they are never too important or too busy competing with each other to care for the most vulnerable among us. But more powerfully, that unnamed child in Jesus’ arms is . . . you. And me. And everyone. Christ welcomes us and loves us unconditionally, regardless of how smart, beautiful, successful, or rich we may or may not be because that is the way God his Abba loves. That’s the way it works in all healthy parent-child relationships. We don’t love our newborn babies because they are successful businesswomen or starting quarterbacks. We just love them. And they let us love them. And there is no substitute for that kind of love. Once we know and experience such love from God, we never need to compare ourselves with others again. Our worth is infinite; we are adored and valued just the way we are. If we want to stop scrambling and wasting our lives in the doomed effort to try to find some degree of self-worth by being better than others, then we need to accept like children that God already loves us beyond measure, that we are already cherished for who we are. Jesus says exactly this in Mark’s Gospel: Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it (Mark 10:15).

I cannot make you receive God’s love. Jesus Christ, who does no violence, will not force you to accept his love. I can only encourage all of us to let down our guard and allow the Holy Spirit to convey to us how much God loves us. And not just allow it but ask for it. And in my experience, that takes time: it’s an ongoing process of conversion. We let some of that love in, until it bumps up against some self-judgment or self-hatred within us. And then we pray for grace and healing until that self-judgment or self-hatred dissolves, leading us into ever deeper levels of love and acceptance. It’s not always an easy process: we so often resist the very thing we crave; what we frantically try to earn by beating others can only be received as a gift. But even if we fight the gift, the Giver is infinitely patient. When we let her, God will show each one of us that we are precious beyond compare.

Let go. September 12, 2021. The Rev. Kathleen M. Sturges

Mark 8:27-38

“Let go of the rock!” I heard the river guide yell. I was about 12 years old, alone in the middle of white water rapids. It was a vacation that had gone awry. Uncharacteristically, my family signed up for an adventure rafting trip down the Stanislaus River in California. The guide reassured us that it would be perfectly safe excursion. Everyone would have a life jacket on and the only people who fell out of the boat were those who were asking for it. Famous last words... 

So there I was, along with my family and the larger group, life jacket on, paddle in hand, straddling an inflatable raft heading into our first rapids. I was excited and determined to do my part. “Forward,” the guide shouted and I paddled forward. “Back!” he commanded and I earnestly paddled backwards. But somewhere in the middle of all that paddling I realized that I wasn’t pushing water around anymore. I was paddling air because I had popped out of the boat. And then,splash! I was in cold, choppy waters being tossed to and fro, completely out of control until the current pushed me against a large rock. From that vantage point I could see the raft waiting at the bottom of the rapids. And that’s when I heard over the roar of the water the guide’s words, “Let go of the rock!” ”Are you kidding me?” I thought. I knew my circumstances were not ideal, but it seemed a lot better than the alternative. Letting go of the rock meant entering into the unpredictable rapids, being tossed and turned by forces greater than I. It meant loss of control and that is a very scary thing. Yet even then I knew the more I clung to the rock, the more stuck I was. The only way to a better situation, a better life, was to let go. And so I did.

Jesus speaks of something similar when he tells says 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.

His point being, the harder you try to hold onto your life, the more you desire to control it, the more you seek to preserve your life as is, the more stuck you will become, and the less will actually live.

That is a hard truth. So no wonder Peter pushes back by rebuking Jesus. God’s Messiah, the Christ, is not supposed to let go of his life, to suffer and die. He is supposed to live and reign. Peter had the right idea - that through God in Christ all shall be well - but he was totally wrong about the way it would happen. It wasn’t going to happen through control and power and might, but by surrender and love and sacrifice. That was Jesus’ plan and if we are to truly live it needs to become our plan too.

If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. Yes, this saying of Jesus has been preached to destructive extremes. Nonetheless, it should not be ignored for the self-denial of which Jesus speaks of is not about denying our needs or squashing our desires or silently suffering. That leads to death, not life. Rather it was the Trappist monk, Thomas Merton, who was the first to suggest that the self that Jesus wants us to deny here is not our bodily self, but our false self. Now you may or may not have ever heard of the false self, but I bet you know what I’m talking about. It’s the self in you that acts from a place of fear, control or isolation. The false self gets overwhelmed by stress, doubt, and insecurity. It is performance and achievement focused. It’s driven by ego and the unending demands of “I, me, mine.” Ultimately, what makes this self false is that it is disconnected from divine love. When Jesus talks about denying ourselves he’s not talking about denying the genuine needs of body, mind or spirit. But in order to truly live we are to deny our False Self so that our True Self, which is our Christ Self can live.

And surely there are times where we have experienced this true, Christ Self. It’s those moments when you operate from a place of calm and connection. When you feel secure, accepted, and peaceful. When you are able to see all people, even your enemies, through the eyes of compassion. When at the heart of what you do, say, and think is self-giving, self-sacrificing. When you feel rooted and ground in divine love. This is when you are living out of your Christ Self and you are fully alive.

Every moment of every day Jesus invites us to live this true life by calling us to deny the smallness that our False Self desperately clings to. But we so often resist because that type of denying, that letting go, means a loss of control and that can be a very scary thing - so scary that it can even feel like dying. But by letting go of our false self - first by recognizing it and then by choosing to surrender it over and over and over again to God - our Christ Self is allowed to emerge. And we experience abundant life enfolded in God’s love.

You would think that after the first time I fell out of the raft I would have learned my lesson. But oh no, I fell out again, and I believe I fell out a third time before it dawned on me that perhaps I should do something different. But before I wised up, each time I was thrown into the rapids I eventually found myself pushed up against a rock. As tempting as it was to stay nestled against the false security the rock offered me I knew I needed to let go. I had to trust what the river guide - that I would be better off letting go. And he was right.

If any want to become my followers, 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.

Let go: let go and live.

 

 

No distinctions. September 5, 2021. The Rev. David M. Stoddart

 

James 2: 1 - 17; Mark 7: 24 - 37 

 PLU. Maybe you know what that means, but I did not. When I was in seminary, I worked for a time at St. James’ Church, Madison Avenue. It was new territory for me, geographically and culturally: my seminary was in the lower West Side of Manhattan, and St. James’ was a very wealthy parish on the upper East Side. And in my first weeks there, I would occasionally hear people use the term “PLU.” And I kept thinking, “Am I supposed to know what that means?” So one day I said to this very fashionably dressed woman who seemed fairly friendly, “I feel stupid asking this, but could you tell me what PLU means?” She gave me this odd  look and said, “It means ‘people like us.’” And it hit me that at least some members of that church were constantly assessing whether or not others were “people like them,” whether or not they were okay and acceptable. Now, I didn’t know (and didn’t ask) whether I was considered PLU or not, but I knew for a fact that many of the people that parish ministered to were not. I was there serving in their social outreach ministry, which involved extensive work with the homeless, the addicted, and those suffering from AIDS. They were doing really good things to help people, but the people they were helping would not be sitting in their pews on a Sunday morning. They were mostly poor and socially unattractive. They were not PLU.

And of course that phenomenon is not unique to St. James’ Church. We can tell from the letter of St. James we read from today that this kind of favoritism reaches back to the earliest decades of the church. The passage we heard this morning is as relevant today as when it was first written, describing how wealthy and attractive people are warmly welcomed at worship, while anyone who is clearly poor and not well-dressed is treated shabbily. Those early Christians were not supposed to make  distinctions, but they did — and so do we. I’m guessing that most of us are constantly assessing people without even thinking about it: She’s really smart. He’s good looking. She’s awkward. He goes to a good school. This family is well-to-do. That family is poor. Some people are PLU. Some people are not.

Now, maybe that kind of evaluating is unavoidable, but if we are going to live in the Kingdom of God and experience the fullness of life in the Spirit, we will have to surrender our need to make such distinctions, at least when it comes to sharing the love of Christ. Because the most insidious form of assessment is determining who is worthy of love and who is not. It’s easy to love people who look like us, who think like us, who live like us. And if we’re not careful, we may even start believing that God evaluates in the same way we do. But we would be terribly wrong. Over and over again Jesus scandalizes people by insisting that God loves everyone equally. Everyone. In the Gospel today, a Syrophoenician woman, a Gentile and a foreigner, asks  Jesus to cast out a demon from her daughter. What he says to her sounds harsh, but he evokes from her the right response, the only response that is true: God cares for everyone. This woman knows that, and her daughter is healed.

Some of the Pharisees and others who oppose Jesus don’t know this, and are horrified as he  shows that God loves prostitutes as much as synagogue leaders, tax collectors as much as scribes, Gentiles as much as Jews. God loves the people who show up at worship in dirty clothes with no money as much as God loves those who arrive with gold rings and fine attire. Even more shocking perhaps, God loves the sinful  as much as the virtuous. As Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, his Father makes the sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous (Matthew 5:45). God loves everyone, infinitely and unconditionally. No exceptions.

That is all true, but I know I can’t just stand up here and exhort you to love everyone equally, because I know it won’t work. I know that because it has never worked on me. Intellectually, I can agree that we are all equal in the eyes of God while my heart continues to make lots of distinctions and I continue to believe that I really am better and more loveable than those people with cardboard signs begging for money at intersections, not to mention murderers or Taliban fighters. But what I can do is share with you a crucial part of my ongoing conversion process, which is failure, my own failure. So many times I have been ugly, mean-spirited, petty, hurtful. I say that with no self-pity: it’s just a fact. There are beautiful things about me as well, and there have been moments when I have radiated the goodness of God. But so many times I have been the exact opposite of Christ-like. My own efforts to be more virtuous have so often failed miserably. And yet, in the depths of my spirit, by sheer grace, I have come to know that I am still loved by God, infinitely and unconditionally. I realize that in the Gospel story today, I am one of the dogs, and — forgive me — so are you. And yet we all, all of us, deserve the crumbs that fall from the table. In fact, God will give us the whole feast.

I am convinced that the key to not assessing others lies in our own honest self-assessment. What can soften our hearts and enlarge our spirits is realizing at the core of  our being that we are loved, not because we are good or beautiful or successful, but just because we exist. We all benefit from the fact that God draws no distinctions but cares passionately for everyone. On our worst days we are adored. And knowing that has enabled me to see other people differently. I don’t know what pain or brokenness lies behind someone else’s story, and I don’t know that I would have done any better in their circumstances. I just know that God cherishes and yearns for every person, just as God cherishes and yearns for me. There is just no need for assessments and evaluations, no distinctions to make: all people are PLU. And we can thank God that’s true.