Heel Marks in the Sand

Lent 1B; Mark 1:9-15; St. Paul’s, Smithfield, NC 2/22/2015

Jim Melnyk: “Heel Marks in the Sand”

Probably most of us are familiar with Mary Stevenson’s poem titled, Footprints in the Sand.  You recall the poem recounts a person’s dream.  In her dream she is walking along the beach with the risen Christ.  As they walk, scenes from her life flash before her, and she sees two sets of footprints along the beach, her prints and those of Jesus.  She notices that during the roughest times in her life there is only one set of footprints, and she asks Jesus why he had abandoned her during those hard times.  Jesus replies, “I love you and will never leave you.  Those times when you see only one set of footprints are the times I carried you.” 

The dream walker sighs in precious content to know this wonderful truth.  But did you know the rest of the story?  Jesus points to more than a few places where there is one set of footprints and two deep grooves in the sand.  “You see those deep grooves in the sand?” “Yes.” “That’s where I had to drag you along.”

Okay, so we might chuckle about that one, but perhaps it’s a good illustration of what it’s like for us when we enter into wilderness places in our lives.  We don’t like going outside our comfort zones – at least I don’t know too many people who revel in that reality.  And while Jesus didn’t exactly get dragged out into the wilderness, Mark tell us he was driven by the Holy Spirit – a word that can be literally translated as “hurled into the wilderness” as in throwing a javelin; or “cast into the wilderness” using the same word used by Mark when Jesus would cast out demons.  So it’s not exactly a picture of a voluntary journey in Mark’s gospel – there doesn’t seem to be a lot of choice involved. 

The wilderness in Jesus’ time was a metaphor for chaos, and a reminder of Israel’s testing by God following the exodus from Egypt.  In the wilderness Jesus is among wild beasts and what sounds like the constant presence of the Tempter – and the constant presence of angels as well. 

Matthew and Luke, on the other hand, write about a Spirit-filled Jesus being led into the wilderness – which seems a bit more of a mutual act on the part of Jesus and the Spirit.  However, once in the wilderness, the Jesus of Matthew and Luke seems to be left on his own, and by the end of the forty days he is famished. 

Only toward the end of his forty days does the Tempter come upon him, and Jesus goes head-to-head with him in a battle of spiritual wits.  And it is only after the Tempter leaves that angels come to minister to Jesus in the versions of the story told by Matthew and Luke.  God, why is there only one set of footprints?

Even though we’ve heard these different versions of the temptation, or the testing, of Jesus in the wilderness many times over the years – in fact, every year on the First Sunday in Lent – perhaps we still wonder what it’s all about.  Why would Jesus, who is the Son of God – why would Jesus, who is God’s own Beloved, attested to at his Baptism – why would Jesus, the Word of God made flesh and come to dwell among us – why would Jesus, of all people, need to be tested – or tempted – as he prepares to begin his ministry?

Well, we could talk about our assertion that Jesus is both fully human and fully divine – and that in the midst of all that’s happening the human side of him needs to be aware of what his journey means.  We could talk about the idea that Jesus’ Messiahship is an unfolding reality in his life – something his human nature slowly comes to grip with over the course of his ministry.  And we would have a part of the picture.

But perhaps there’s more – perhaps Jesus has to come to grips with what means as a human being to be hungry – to be famished – and perhaps that’s a memory he carries with him when he feeds the five thousand in a remote place.  Perhaps Jesus being driven into the wilderness by the Spirit of God has something to do with Jesus coming to grips with the history of his people, who wandered in the wilderness with only God to depend upon.  Jesus actually living a part of the wilderness journey as a reminder of who he is, and who he is to become for Israel and for the world. 

My sister-in-law Glyn Ruppe-Melnyk writes, “Jesus goes into the wilderness at the beginning of his ministry, in order to embody the act of remembrance…. He remembers the story of his people and he strives to re-member their covenanted relationship with God. He is aware of what has been, but he also understands and believes in what may yet be” (http://motherglyn.com/tag/fourth-day-of-lent/).  It is what Glyn calls, “purposeful memory.”

We’ve mentioned the sparseness of Mark’s gospel before – the lack of details in some of the stories.  Matthew and Luke flesh out the encounter in the wilderness for us.  Temptations to claim his power as the Son of God long before he is ready – to claim that power as a quick fix – as a shortcut to what he and God have envisioned for the people of this world.  Temptations to use power to manipulate the hearts and minds of humanity and gain a throne without the challenges – without the struggle – without the suffering – without the mess – without the cross. 

Perhaps Jesus’ wilderness journey reminds him that like Israel and her forty years of struggle, Jesus and those whom he will meet and serve, each need to experience wilderness in their own lives to better understand the presence of the Holy One in their own lives as well.

Because, you see, Jesus knows that it was in the wilderness of Sinai that Israel came to know and love God with all her heart.  It was in the wilderness of Sinai that Israel began to understand what it means to love her neighbor as herself.  It is in the wilderness of Sinai where God woos Israel, and where God and Israel argue like young lovers learning about one another.  Jesus knows that it is in the wilderness of Sinai that covenant is made, where God says, “I will take you as my people, and I will be your God. You shall know that I am the LORD your God, who has freed you from the burdens of the Egyptians” (Exodus 6:7).  And it is in the wilderness that Jesus remembers the covenant, and finds the strength and the love to stand against the powers of this world that seek to separate us from the love of God, and to live and die for the people he loves.  Jesus “will re-member himself as the embodiment of all that God has called him to be” (op. cit.).

Most of us, I believe, know something about the wilderness – especially the wilderness as a place of chaos and wild beasts – the wilderness as a place where our faith is tested and tempted – a lost job, struggles at school, challenges at home, chronic illness, even the death of a loved one.  Perhaps we identify with the person in Stevenson’s poem, who upon looking back on our lives sees only one set of footprints and think of ourselves as having been abandoned by God. 

Perhaps we’ve found ourselves digging our heels into the ground, feeling as if we’ve been dragged into the wilderness against our wishes.  Mark’s witness – Jesus’ story – the story of his people in Sinai – all point to the promise that we don’t enter the wilderness alone, nor is the wilderness our final resting place.

But sometimes, if we’re fortunate enough, we recognize the wilderness as a place into which the Spirit of God leads us from time to time – a place where we can be still in quiet and listen for God – a place where we remember God met and wooed Israel – a place where Jesus found not only his purpose, but his courage to stand in the breach for us.

Lent can be wilderness experience for us allowing us to enter a place where the busyness of life doesn’t have power over us – where the distractions and demands that overwhelm our lives don’t have power over us.  Lent can be a season of opportunity – opportunity to seek God’s purpose in our lives, and to come face-to-face with that which tests and tempts us away from following Jesus.  

Lent can become a place of covenant renewal for us, a place where once tested and re-purposed, we remember God’s promise to be present with us always.  And so, having been tested, we can come to the joy of Easter Day as a people renewed – ready to celebrate and proclaim the kingdom of God.

Ashes, Ashes, We All Fall Down!

Ash Wednesday 2015; Mt. 6:1-6, 16-21; St. Paul’s, Smithfield, NC 2/17/15

Jim Melnyk: “Ashes, Ashes, We All Fall Down”

How many of you recall the old nursery rhyme, “Ring around the rosie, a pocket full of posies, ashes, ashes, we all fall down!”?  Do you remember singing the rhyme, perhaps while holding hands in a circle and then all falling down at the end?  Did you know that legend says it has to do with the plagues that rocked Europe centuries ago?  Some say the ring around the rosie was about the circular rash plague victims exhibited, and that the posies were used to cover the smell of death.  Ashes – and American addition – had to do with the cremation of the dead or perhaps even the London fire that helped end the plague.  Falling down – that’s what happens at the end. Even if some scholars are correct and it doesn't date back to the period of the European plagues, the imagery certainly fits.

Okay – so Ash Wednesday isn’t about the plague – but it does have something to do with our mortality – with the reality that we come from the earth and to the earth we all return.  But one danger of Ash Wednesday is that with all the language of sinfulness and penitence which we’re about to rehearse once again in a few minutes, we can get fixated on being broken – perhaps even being unworthy.  We can “easily slip into” what a former colleague of mine, the Very Rev. Todd Donatelli, refers to as “the bad theology that our primary identity is our fallenness, our brokenness, and forget that we approach our brokenness from God’s proclamation of our inherent goodness, our inherent blessedness and belovedness, our being created in the image of God” (The Very Rev. Todd Donatelli, Dean of The Cathedral of All Souls).

The antidote for avoiding such bad theology is to recall what we have learned about God and about ourselves during the season of Epiphany.  “Without Epiphany,” Todd writes, “Lent is dangerous and dishonest.  Epiphany is about the manifestation of God in human flesh; the manifestation of God in Jesus’ flesh and the ongoing manifestation of God in all human flesh including yours and mine,” he writes.

As we prepare to enter into our Lenten Journey, let’s take a moment to recall what we have learned over the past six weeks.  We began Epiphany with the remembrance of God choosing to become one with us in the person of Jesus, and with wise men coming on the scene to pay homage and proclaim the mystery of the Word Made Flesh (Matthew 2:1-12).  We stood by the banks of the Jordan River and witnessed the Baptism of our Lord – and through Mark’s narration became privy to the Voice of God assuring Jesus that he was indeed God’s own Beloved – someone in whom God was well pleased (Mark 1:11).  We learned that Jesus called everyday people to follow him – and that following Jesus means being willing to risk the proclamation of the kingdom of God – even to those who are threatened by the grace and love of God.  And we learned that the kingdom of God is at hand – that the kingdom of God is as close as our hands held out in front of our faces.  Finally, we were given a glimpse of the transfigured Christ – a promise that the cross would not – cannot ever win.     

Epiphany began with a recalling of our own baptisms, and our promises to seek and serve Christ in all people, to work for justice and peace for all people, and to respect the dignity of every human being.  Lent gives us an opportunity to reflect on how well we have or have not manifested the light of Christ in our own lives – to reflect on how well we have or have not lived into our baptismal promises. 

We come to Lent not as creatures despised by God, but as creatures created in God’s own image and likeness – as creatures who God loves deeply and with whom God desires a loving relationship as a parent desires her own children.  We come to Lent as a people called by God – as a people wooed by God – as a people already forgiven – as a people sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever.

But we also come with our own brokenness, and as Dean Donatelli reminds us, “Lent offers the invitation to reflect on broken relationship: brokenness [within our own selves – with how we relate to our own selves, brokenness] between each other, between [us and] God, and between [us and] the [whole of] creation.”  We approach Lent as a people not in need of a casket, but as a people in need of healing – and not as a people with a God of retribution who takes great pleasure in punishment, but as a people beloved of God, and followers of Jesus, the Great Physician of our souls.

So as you come forward to receive the imposition of ashes this night, recalling that we are dust, and to dust we shall return; let us realize that to speak of our mortality is not an evil thing – it is not a curse – for when we die to this world we will live in Christ.  But let us consider as we come forward what it is we must die to in this life to be fully alive in Christ – in this life.  Ash Wednesday isn’t a time to sing Ring Around the Rosie, but it is a time to enter into deep reflection about our relationships with each other, with this world, and with God; and to seek ways to strengthen those relationships that are healthy and find healing for those that are broken.  

We wear the ashes of Lent because we are a people created in God’s image and given the promise of new life – the promise of healing and love in Christ Jesus. 

The ash is a symbol promising that while we may say “yes” to sorrow and sin in our lives – that while we may at time embrace and revel in our brokenness – God is the One who always says “yes” to reconciliation, “yes” to healing, “yes” to the promise and hope for new life for each of us.  For if there was no hope – if there were no promise of reconciliation and new life – there would be no point in wearing this sign – this sign of our mortality – this prayer for life.

In Christ Jesus we are a people who rise like the Phoenix from the ashes marking our brow.  We rise in the hope and promise of a caring, forgiving, and loving God.  In the love of God – in the life, death, and resurrection of the One we call Christ – we are much more than the ashes we wear this day.   Amen.

What Must We Die to in Our Lives?

Last Sunday After the Epiphany; Mk 9:2-9; St. Paul’s, Smithfield – 2/15/2015

Jim Melnyk: “What Must We Die to in Our Lives?”

I was not in much of a good mood upon my first and only approach to the famed Natural Bridge in the western part of Virginia.  To begin with, it wasn’t exactly right off the interstate for someone making a spontaneous detour.  And then the parking lot was big – and crowded.  And we had to pay money to see this so-called wonder of the world.  And we had to go through a crowded, tacky, gift shop to get to the head of the trail – to walk down a long set of steps, and then downhill to the bridge (which would mean a steep uphill return).  Shameful to say, my mood darkened the further downhill we walked.

Then we turned a bend, and there was this giant hole in the hill in front of me. 

I looked up – I mean, I looked waaay up – to see the bridge crossing my line of sight some 270 feet above me!  Every ounce of frustration – every desire to grumble – every bit of dis-ease in me – suddenly disappeared.  What an incredible sight.  What a loss it would have been to have missed seeing its majesty and splendor!  I seem to recall myself grinning and shaking my head and letting out a whistle of awe.  And that was just over a bridge of rock most likely created when a cavern collapsed long ago – granted it was 270 feet tall – but in reality it was just an incredible accident of nature.  I was overwhelmed by the sight, and my darkened mood was transformed.

       

 Peter, James, and John on the other hand – Peter, James, and John, the inner circle of Jesus’ disciples – most likely his closest friends – they find themselves hiking up a mountain.  And if it’s Mount Hermon, in what is now the Golan Heights, as some traditions tell us – if it’s Mount Hermon – which is close to Caesarea Philippi in the far north of Galilee – they could have been hiking as high as 9,000 feet to get to the mountain top – which puts my grumbling countenance to shame even further!  What’s more, those close friends of Jesus are hiking up Mt. Hermon with heavy hearts – with their own varying degrees of frustration, fear, shock, and perhaps anger. 

Back at Caesarea Philippi, just six days earlier, they had a rather unsettling – had a rather troubling – had a rather fearful – conversation with their teacher and Lord.  You remember the story, don’t you?  “Who do the people around us say that I am?” Jesus had asked.  Remember the answer?  They said, “Well, some think you’re John the Baptist come back to life – or Elijah returned from heaven – or some other great prophet of old.”  And certainly we can understand that answer, because Jesus seems to embody not only the hopes and dreams of those great prophets, but the disquieting and challenging message of them as well.  Jesus, you recall, pressed them further.  “Who do you say that I am?” Peter had blurted out, “You are the Messiah!” (Mark 8:27-30)  And it had gone downhill from there. 

Jesus went on to explain to them, for the first time in Mark’s account, about his impending rejection by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes.  The journey to Jerusalem will be a journey toward betrayal, torture, death, and new life – and his disciples were overwhelmed.  Peter tried to talk him out of it and Jesus likened him to the Tempter who had confronted him during his wilderness fast.

Once again we get smacked right in the face with the prevailing message of Jesus: that  “the kingdom of God [which is at hand] is not about life after death, but about life in this world” (Conversations with Scripture: The Gospel of Mark, Marcus Borg, p. 28). 

It is in the midst of this life that we are called to follow Jesus – and his way, which we follow, is a way into the very heart of the kingdom of God. 

What the disciples heard that day in Caesarea Philippi – and what we are challenged to hear every time we are confronted with Mark’s Gospel – is the unchanging and mystical paradox of the kingdom: that, as Marcus Borg puts it, “the way of the cross [proclaimed and lived by Jesus] is about life and death; to avoid [the way of the cross] in order to save one’s life is to lose one’s life, and to embrace [the way of the cross] is to save one’s life.  [It is the unnerving reality that in the Gospel of Mark, and in the kingdom of God,] the path of death is the path of life.” (ibid, p. 77)  Try chewing on that mess for a bit while climbing to the top of a high mountain – or just while quietly sitting at home or at work! Following Jesus isn’t supposed to be easy – and if it’s too easy, then we might want to look a little closer at the Gospel we proclaim!

Peter, James, and John had to be feeling pretty much wiped out by the time the reach their stopping place with Jesus.  They’ve been turning this mess over and over again in their heads for almost a week now – and I’m wondering if their heads are about to explode.  I’m wondering how their nerves could be anything other than frayed and raw.  “Give us something, Jesus,” I can imagine them saying.

“Give us something to help us feel hopeful in all this mess.  Give us something to hang our hats on that’s a bit less cryptic than ‘rise again.’” 

And does he ever!  Jesus is transfigured before their faces, and there in the midst of his glory appears Moses and Elijah – the Law and the Prophets – perhaps Israel’s two greatest prophets.  Could it get any wilder than that?  Yes it can – and it does!  For the same voice that spoke to Jesus at his baptism, now speaks to his inner circle of disciples as well.  And in the midst of a glorious vision – a vision so well remembered that all four Gospels make note of it – in the midst of this shining vision of transfiguring glory, the voice from heaven proclaims:  “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!”

Presbyterian Pastor Leanne Pearce Reed makes clear that the command from God is “not to see but to listen” to what Jesus has told them.  And since we have no new teaching offered atop the mountain in any of the four Gospels, we must look back to the last teaching offered by Jesus before this mountain top experience (Feasting on the Gospels: Mark, Cynthia A. Jarvis and E. Elizabeth Johnson, General Editors, 2014, p 257).  The kingdom of God stands in opposition to the powers of the world – and the kingdom’s message will always put those who proclaim that message at risk.

How well do the disciples listen?  How well do we listen to what Jesus tells us about the kingdom of God?  We want our faith to be about being loved and comforted – and there is a lot to be said for that in the Gospels.  We are, indeed, God’s beloved and Jesus, indeed, proclaims a kingdom ultimately upheld by the peace and love of God. 

But we struggle with that part of our faith which speaks about dying to oneself to find life – the part that says “whoever would want to be first in the kingdom of God must be a servant of all” – the part that calls us to “seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbor as our self” – the part that challenges us to “strive for justice and peace among all people, respecting the dignity of every human being” (BCP, p 305).

What do we have to be willing to die to in our lives in order that even the poorest among us can see a doctor when needed, or not need to choose between food on the table, a roof over their heads, or life-saving medications?  What do we need to be willing to die to in our lives, so that even the poorest schools get the text books and teachers they need to educate every sister and brother in our communities?  What do we need to die to in our lives in order that our water sources are kept clean and our air kept breathable? 

What do we need to die to in our lives so that we can say, “When my car stalled out four young men helped me push it to the side of the road,” rather than “Four Hispanic men or four Black men?”  Because we most certainly don’t say, “Four White men…” What do we need to die to in our lives that senseless tragedies like the death of three young people in Chapel Hill not become the norm for our society? 

Those are just a few of the hard, scary, yet Gospel-based questions we must wrestle with as followers of the Way – as followers of Jesus, who “came into this world not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).  And while we might not all agree on the answers, the questions are real, and must be asked.  And as people of faith – as followers of Jesus, we must seek life-giving answers.

Remember that risky prayer we offered on the First Sunday of Advent?  “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down…” (Isaiah 64:1a)!  Here, standing atop a high mountain, the heavens are indeed torn open, if only for an instant, and the glory of God’s hope for humanity is revealed in transfigured glory! 

Only the road to that promised glory will take Jesus and the disciples down from the mountain top and straight through the valley of the shadow of death.  The glory that surrounds Peter, James, and John will be veiled for a bit under the shadow of the cross – only to be revealed in staggering wonder on the Day of Resurrection.