Jesus joined all humanity in his baptism, and led us from those waters into the ways of service, humility, and love.
Here’s a transcript:
Hau’oli Makahiki Hou! Happy New Year!
And I also wish you a Happy Epiphany. I’m recording this episode of What I’m Thinking on the Epiphany holiday. Epiphany is one of the most ancient of the Christian celebrations. It recognizes the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. And so as we begin 2026, may we all find God’s love revealed to us, not just through What I’m Thinking, but in God’s movements in our hearts and in our souls.
I’m thinking about a way in which God moved in the heart of Jesus. That’s the third chapter of Matthew: Jesus’ baptism.
Unlike the other Gospels, Matthew described a conversation between John and Jesus. “I ought to be baptized by you,” John protested, “yet you have come to me.” “Let it be so for now,” said Jesus, “for this way we will do all that is required.” And so John baptized Jesus; he came up out of the water; he saw the Holy Spirit descending on him like a dove; and he heard those words: “This is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased.”
Matthew emphasized something that the other Gospel writers, I think, understood but chose not to emphasize, and that was Jesus refusal to play into notions of power and of privilege. Instead, Jesus chose to fully join us in that necessity of recognizing what we have done poorly or sinfully, and that we need to take steps to wash that away, to set it into the past, and take on new ways.
Jesus did, indeed, take on new ways following his baptism: his baptism launched his ministry. But he didn’t need the baptism to begin it, now did he? And John made that clear.
Jesus did the thing even though he didn’t need to because he didn’t want to take a shortcut that the rest of us cannot. Jesus chose not to exercise any kind of privilege or pride. He chose not to live in hubris. He chose to give us an example of humility and of acceptance and of following the hard and sometimes painful steps that lead us towards a brighter future, that lead us towards doing fully the will of God. Jesus in the Jordan not only joined us; Jesus led us from the waters of baptism out into a life of full service, and faithfulness, and loving kindness.
It was an astonishing thing to do then and now.
That’s what I’m thinking. I’m curious to hear what you’re thinking. Leave me your thoughts in the comment section below. I’d love to hear from you.
From first to last, Jesus grounded his ministry in mercy.
Here’s a transcript:
I’m thinking about the tenth chapter of Mark’s Gospel (Mark 10:46-52).
This is the last story that Mark told about Jesus’ ministry before his entry into Jerusalem. Chapter eleven begins with that story of the triumphant entry into the city. So what did Mark use as the very last story he chose to tell before describing the events of Holy Week?
He talked about a healing.
A blind man who begged for his living called Bartimaeus heard that Jesus was near. He called out, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” — a pretty daring thing to say. “Son of David” was a royal title and speaking such words in Jericho, not far from Jerusalem, well. That was dangerous. People around him tried to keep him quiet, probably for their sake as much as for his, but Jesus heard the commotion and said, “Bring him to me.”
“What do you want?” Jesus asked Bartimaeus and Bartimaeus asked to see.
Another healing.
Mark began his account of Jesus’ ministry pretty much with a healing. Jesus went to a synagogue and there healed a man with a withered arm [Author’s note: it’s actually an exorcism; I got mixed up], and so began his account of Jesus’ actions and words in Galilee. From first to last, Jesus’ ministry among us was grounded in mercy.
“Son of David, have mercy on me.”
Jesus brought to the people around him not just power — plenty of people bring power. Jesus brought a willingness, indeed an eagerness, to use the power that he had for others’ benefit, to make their lives better, to bring them healing, to restore to them what they had lost and sought to find again.
Bartimaeus went away rejoicing.
Jesus went away to give his final act of mercy, challenging the authorities in the city, and at their hands going to the cross.
Mercy is what drove Jesus from first to last. Can mercy drive us from first to last?
That’s what I’m thinking. I’m curious to hear what you’re thinking. Leave me your thoughts in the comment section below. I’d love to hear from you.
My first job for which I was paid – other than coins from the Tooth Fairy – was as a performing magician. I did three shows at the Blandford Fair in Blandford, Massachusetts, when I was around thirteen. And I got paid for it.
I wasn’t terribly good, but I was better then than I would be now. I’ve forgotten a lot of what I knew.
Most of what I knew came from the writings of Henry Hay, particularly his 1947 book Learn Magic. I do remember something from that book. More than once, Hay urged his readers to slow down and give the audience a chance to grasp what was going on. He’d say something like, “Hold up a coin, and count slowly to three. By that time, the slow one in the back knows you’re holding a coin.”
And if you have to, repeat yourself. Repeat yourself again, until everybody knows what you said. Later in life I learned a similar formula: Tell them what you’ll tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you told them.
By this point in Mark’s Gospel, Jesus had been struggling to convince his disciples that his journey to Jerusalem would end in arrest, crucifixion, and death – and that this would be OK. It hadn’t gone well. In chapter eight, when Jesus first said it, Simon Peter’s protest had been so forceful that Jesus lashed out with, “Get behind me, Satan!” In chapter nine, Jesus said it again, and none of his disciples dared to ask him what he was talking about. They did, however, start arguing about who was greatest.
Jesus told them, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” You might recall that I preached on that story, asking, “Who wants to be first?” and suddenly nobody did.
Here in chapter ten, Jesus told the twelve for the third time that he would be killed and resurrected. The lectionary, somewhat strangely, skips that section, and jumps to what we read this morning, when James and John asked for a special place at Jesus’ side. Let’s be careful, however, to be sure of what they meant.
Sarah Hinlicky Wilson writes at Working Preacher, “James and John misunderstand the glory they are pursuing actively, for Jesus’ ‘baptism is not a matter of action but of passion. Their boastful assurance ‘We are able!’ earns a response from Jesus whose irony can only be grasped by those who read to the end of the story: you bet you’re going to undergo this baptism, but it doesn’t mean what you think it means.”
They thought it meant the liberation of the people of Israel from foreign domination, which included the Hasmonean monarchs who were so clearly lackeys of the Romans. Goodbye Caesar; goodbye Herod: Welcome, King Jesus! A new-crowned monarch would need a royal court, you see, a collection of aides and officials to pass along Jesus’ directions and, of course, receive near-royal honors themselves. The most powerful of them would stand to the right and to the left in a formal setting.
They thought they were asking for what other civilizations might call a Prime Minister, a Chancellor, a Grand Vizier. It’s an impressive ambition for a couple of fishermen from a backwater part of the world.
Debie Thomas, writing at JourneyWithJesus.net, notes that James and John did a few things right. “First, the two brothers place their full faith in the right person… Second, they are ambitious for the reign of God. They expect and want Jesus to be glorified; they expect and want the world’s wrongs to be righted… Thirdly, James and John ask. They approach Jesus boldly, and make their request with hearts full of confidence. Is the request tacky? Yes. Is it borne of ignorance and immaturity? Yes. Are some of the motives behind the request selfish? Yes. And yet. They ask.”
As D. Mark Davis writes at LeftBehindAndLovingIt, “Since this is the third time that Jesus has disclosed his impending death, and the third reaction, a question would be whether James and John have a sense of what Jesus’ ‘glory’ really is. The twelve’s reactions to the first two disclosures would indicate that none of them gets or accepts that death is in the package.”
Do any of us, really?
One more time, Jesus brought the twelve together to tell them, “You know that among the gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; instead, whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many.”
One more time.
Mark quoted Jesus on this theme twice. Matthew quoted Jesus on this theme of greatness via service four times. Luke made it five times.
I mean, one more time, right?
John didn’t really quote Jesus on this, but he made sure to demonstrate Jesus’ emphasis on greatness through service, when he described Jesus washing the disciples’ feet at the Last Supper.
They didn’t get it, so Jesus said it one more time. I would guess that some in the early church didn’t get it, either, so Matthew and Luke said it one more time and time again. I would guess that when John got to writing, there was enough of a gap between words and actions that instead of saying it one more time, he wrote about Jesus doing it one more time.
One more time.
What if we did understand greatness as service? What if we reserved honor for those who help other people? What if we provided resources and power to those who share it with those around them? What if we made sure that we reward those who lift up (and who are lifted up), rather than those who take and grab and keep and hoard?
What if we honored Jesus with magnanimity, not might?
What would the world look like?
Just to start, a world devoted to serving neighbor and stranger would not go to war. If you prize the welfare of others, you don’t kill them. Or rape them. Or plunder them. Crime rates would plummet, partially because if you care about someone else, you don’t steal from them, but also because the motives for stealing drain away. If you’re hungry, someone will care enough to feed you. If you’re out of work, people will help you find a way until there’s work again.
For that matter, people who care about one another work as best they can, because it’s one way to contribute and to share.
Racism, sexism, heterosexism, and all the other prejudices and oppressions also lose their foundations. When I make your welfare an important thing in my life, how can I accept anything that diminishes you? How can I permit someone else to denigrate you for being who you are, or prevent you from achieving the good you are capable of? How can I withhold my support for you being you?
I won’t pretend that this will be a paradise. Even if every human being fully commits to every other human being, the natural world will not. Floods, droughts, fires, earthquakes, storms, and volcanic eruptions will shatter and disrupt lives. Imperfect human understandings of our impact on the world could lead to things as serious as climate change.
At the interpersonal level, my commitment to your well-being does not mean that I understand your needs. I may get it wrong. I may mistakenly hurt or even injure you. So no. It’s not a paradise in the way we often envision one.
But isn’t it a lot better than what we have? Isn’t it worth dreaming? Isn’t it worth working for? Isn’t it worth changing ourselves for?
Getting there – well, that’s the hard part, for certain. Our structures of power, prejudice, and privilege are well established. Christianity has made relatively little headway against them in two thousand years, and has often adopted them as its own during that time.
So. Small steps. Make positive choices for the welfare of other people. Do the work to find out what people actually need before you do something they don’t need.
Check yourself for your own preconceptions and privilege. Will an action benefit you? Examine it carefully. It may also serve others more than yourself. If it’s better for you than anyone else, though, and especially if it harms someone else, maybe try something different.
Jesus said it to his disciples one more time. He tried it with them one more time, and he’s trying it with us one more time.
One more time, and one more time, and one more time.
The destination is worth the effort.
Amen.
by Eric Anderson
Watch the Recorded Sermon
Pastor Eric sometimes improvises while preaching. Sometimes he even intends to!
The image is “The Songs of Zebedee,” an etching by Jan Luyken from the Phillip Medhurst Collection of Bible illustrations housed at Belgrave Hall, Leicester, England (The Kevin Victor Freestone Bequest). Photo by Phillip Medhurst – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20225346.
Sometimes I feel like Jesus and I have something in common. I felt like this as the parent of young children, and as the technical support person for people confused about computers, and as a preacher. The thing I think we have in common is:
We repeat ourselves.
If you missed that: Jesus and I repeat ourselves. Repeatedly.
Jesus dealt with this question of “who is the greatest” twice in Mark’s Gospel. In Matthew, it rises to four times if you include the time Jesus told his disciples that those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted. In Luke, the count rises to five.
So it seems likely that Jesus tried to get this message across, and it also seems likely that it was a rough message for folks in the early decades of the church, because the Gospel writers emphasized it and re-emphasized it. Uniquely, Luke sets this debate about who is the greatest, and Jesus’ counter to it, at the Last Supper. The Last Supper. Talk about giving this message pride of place!
I haven’t mentioned this message’s appearance in the Gospel of John, because, well, John chose fewer stories for his Gospel and he didn’t tell the one about the disciples arguing about greatness. At the Last Supper, however, John did describe Jesus washing the disciples’ feet. It’s the same theme as what we hear from Luke, isn’t it?
Jesus said, “The kings of the gentiles lord it over them, and those in authority over them are called benefactors. But not so with you; rather, the greatest among you must become like the youngest and the leader like one who serves. For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one at the table? But I am among you as one who serves.”
It’s… kind of a tricky message in this world of ours, though. For several centuries, the powerful have successfully appealed to it to discourage the powerless, the poor, and the oppressed from protesting their condition. Speaking this message as a kahu, I run the risk of telling my hearers that they should accept injustice. Plenty of people have told them precisely this: your condition is the will of God, and Jesus says, “Accept it, and oh by the way, give thanks that you’re poor and the person telling you this is rich.”
Jesus, however, didn’t say that. Jesus quoted Isaiah about the rich being sent away empty. Jesus told that story about the reversal of fortunes experienced by a poor man and a rich man after their deaths. It was the rich and the powerful who made sure Jesus died upon a cross.
Jesus wasn’t one of the rich and the powerful. His disciples gave him respect as a teacher and guide, but he didn’t move in the circles of the priesthood or the nobility and certainly not the monarchy. When he spoke of servants, he spoke of people not that much different from himself.
I think Jesus envisioned a world of compassion and care. If all are servants to one another, nobody oppresses anyone else. If all are servants to one another, all benefit from one another’s service. If all are servants to one another, all needs can be satisfied.
We’re a long way from that.
The question is, how do we get there?
We get there by focusing on that goal: a world of compassion and care. We get there by taking steps that are consistent with the goal – deeds of compassion and care – and by naming the deeds that are compassionless and uncaring. We get there by refusing to resort to the means of the oppressors, violence and force. We get there by describing the vision in such a way that others adopt it for their own.
We get there by feeding one another on the life and spirit of Jesus, who meets us at this table, the table at which he repeated himself, saying: “For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one at the table? But I am among you as one who serves.”
Amen.
by Eric Anderson
There was no audio or video recording of this sermon, which was offered to the ‘Aha Mokupuni of the Hawai’i Island Association on October 19, 2024.
Jesus imagined a community without hierarchy and privilege, one based on care and compassion.
Here’s a transcript:
I’m thinking about the tenth chapter of Mark’s Gospel (Mark 10:35-45), which finds Jesus and his disciples on the road to Jerusalem.
Somewhere along the way, James and John found a private moment with Jesus and asked him if they could be at his right and his left when he came into his glory. Those, of course, would have been the places of greatest prominence in the court of a ruler. Jesus didn’t say them yes or no. He said, in fact, that it was up to somebody else to make those decisions, but he took the opportunity to ask them: are you prepared to be baptized with the baptism that I will go through?
They said, “Yes,” not knowing, I suspect, that by baptism Jesus meant death and resurrection.
In a small group there are very few secrets and, indeed, the other disciples learned about this conversation, and they were pretty annoyed with James and John. Jesus summoned them together and said — again — that amongst his community there was not to be a quest for power, but that the greatest of them would be the servant of all of them.
And he proceeded to demonstrate what that meant when he was arrested and executed upon a cross.
In the first century it would have been almost impossible to imagine a social system, a community, that was organized around mutual service. There were the people at the top and there were the many, many, many more people at the bottom, and that was how things worked. A society in which people took care of one another? Well, it was nearly inconceivable. But Jesus dreamed it.
And some decades later, as he set these words down to parchment, words that eventually we would read, Mark dreamed it again: repeating this message about a community made up of servants, of people compassionately caring for one another.
It’s been two thousand years and we haven’t attained it. It is still the dream of Christ.
But just imagine what that could be: a community of compassion and care. Isn’t that worth struggling for, working for, dreaming towards? Isn’t that worth our efforts, our time, and our faith?
That’s what I’m thinking. I’m curious to hear what you’re thinking. Leave me your thoughts in the comment section below. I’d love to hear from you.
I do, of course. I want to be first in the buffet line, and I want to be first getting onto the airplane, and I definitely want to be first off the airplane if I have a short layover, and I want to be first in my class, and I want to be first to select a seat in the theater.
I admit that, with the last name “Anderson,” I was usually assigned the first seat on the left side of the classroom. Except in Chemistry class, when Miss Ames sat ahead of me. My friend whose last name was “Yee” sat in the rear seat on the right side.
Even though I was a pretty good student, I didn’t always want to be under the teacher’s eye like that. Not to mention that if I wasn’t assigned there, I could sit with my friend, who was a fun guy to be with and, on the rare occasions we did get to sit near one another, we were pretty good at distracting one another much like I’m now distracted from this sermon.
The disciples wanted to be first. Until Jesus wanted one of them to tell him what was going on. Then… nobody wanted to be first. Not even Simon Peter, who usually had an answer to any of Jesus’ questions. In fairness, Mark tells this story not long after Simon Peter had had two pretty big and somewhat traumatic experiences. In chapter eight, Peter was the one to declare that Jesus was the Messiah – that must have been a high moment for him. A moment later, though, he protested Jesus’ announcement that the Messiah would be arrested and killed. Jesus’ response was harsh: “Get behind me, Satan!”
At the beginning of this chapter, chapter nine, Peter, James, and John joined Jesus in the trek up a mountain and experienced the Transfiguration, when a glowing Jesus spoke with those great prophets Moses and Elijah. Simon Peter offered to put up shelters for them, but a voice from heaven silenced him, thundering the words, “Listen to him!”
Getting silenced harshly by Jesus is rough. Getting silenced by the voice of God? I’d be quiet.
I think.
Nobody wanted to be first to tell Jesus what they’d been arguing about.
Everybody wanted to be first in what they’d been arguing about. Everybody wanted to be the greatest.
Except… Jesus.
Courtney V. Buggs writes at Working Preacher, “Gentleness and kindness are virtues that sound good, but grit and ruthlessness are often associated with the most powerful and successful. Ambition is celebrated for some, critiqued in others. Jesus disrupts their notion of greatness and significance with an inversion of the social order: ‘Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant [also translated minister] of all’ (verse 35).”
As Cheryl Lindsay writes at UCC.org, “If Jesus was concerned about his position, the incarnation would not have taken place. His very being embodies the shift he invites the disciples to embrace.”
In that moment, in that house, I’m not surprised the disciples didn’t understand. Divine incarnation was not a significant element of Jewish theology. The Greeks and the Romans had stories about wandering gods. Jesus’ friends had probably heard a couple of them. Jews did have stories about interactions with disguised angels (remember Abraham’s three visitors), but they maintained some distinction between messengers of God and God. They weren’t going to think of Jesus as being God incarnate.
They would think of him as being Messiah, but as I’ve said before, the dominant belief about the Messiah in the first century was that he would be the military and political leader to free the Israelites from Greek and Roman rule. Successful military and political leaders aren’t rejected or executed. Jesus’ predictions about “the Son of Man” didn’t make sense. They already had seen Jesus’ reaction to Peter’s protest.
Nobody wanted to be first with that one. Or, well, second.
They would have been happy to be second to Jesus, which would put one of them first among the twelve. In chapter ten Mark told the story of James and John asking Jesus to sit at his right and left “in his glory” – in other words, when he overthrew the Romans and sat upon his throne. They still didn’t get it.
Jesus took the opportunity to say, again, “…whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many (Mark 10:43-45).”
In the first century, that ran against the grain. Very few people could reasonably hope to attain the heights of wealth and power, but they wanted to get there. In the twenty-first century, well, as Dan Clendenin writes at JourneyWithJesus.net, “I think it’s fair to say that our contemporary culture is obsessed with greatness. Consider the endless iterations of the GOAT meme. Who is the ‘greatest of all time’ artist, athlete, musician, or president? There’s even a television reality show called The Goat, in which ‘reality stars’ from other reality shows compete for the title of the greatest reality show contestant of all time. You can’t make this up, right?”
You can, but nobody would believe you.
They didn’t believe Jesus, either, despite his constant repetitions. It took the cross and the resurrection to show them that when he said it, he meant it. Be a helper. Be a caretaker. Welcome the most vulnerable – like this child here. Serve serve serve serve serve. If you want to strive for greatness, strive to serve the most people the most effectively and the most compassionately. Serve all the way to the cross.
As D. Mark Davis writes at LeftBehindAndLovingIt, “Perhaps this is the most scandalous of scandals in Mark’s gospel. By identifying so radically with a child, by embracing the road to rejection, suffering, dying and being raised, Jesus is re-defining both greatness and Godness. It is not in the glory and honor of the Caesars, but in the vulnerability of a child that we encounter God.”
Who wants to be first?
It’s worth mentioning that Jesus wasn’t the only one who knew this. In the second century Jewish rabbis collected what their predecessors had said about the Book of Exodus. Among the stories was one about Rabbi Gamaliel serving his fellow teachers at a meal. They thought he shouldn’t do such a thing, that it was beneath his dignity. But one of the rabbis said, “Abraham himself served his three visiting angels.” And then another said there was one greater than Abraham who served:
“The Holy One, blessed be he! He gives to each and every one what he needs and to everybody what is wanting — and not just to proper people [benei Adam kosherim], but also to evil people and to people who worship idols.”
How much more should we accept God’s invitation, instruction, and encouragement to serve?
I know it’s counter-cultural and counter-intuitive. I know the pursuit of excellence is also a worthwhile value. But we pursue excellence in so many wrong things. We “keep up with the Joneses,” when we could be helping to raise up the Joneses.
As Karoline Lewis writes at Working Preacher, “Mark is pointing to something important, something essential, about believing in Jesus. Because God becoming human, the incarnation, upended every assumption of greatness that the world deemed as definitive. Because God becoming human decided that greatness is not about separation but solidarity, not about better than but relationship. Not about self-adulation but empowerment and encouragement of the other.”
Who are you doing your work for? Is it for your family? That’s not bad. Families are important and it’s vital to meet their needs. Are you working for friends? That’s not bad, either. Support and encouragement builds and maintains strong relationships.
Are you working for a community with which you identify? That’s good, too. Human beings need communities in order to be human. But… do you stop there? Are there no children in other communities with whom you’re concerned? Are there children within this community who do not receive your care? Are there needs that go unmet, not because there aren’t the resources, but because there isn’t the will?
“What if Jesus is right?” asks David Lose at davidlose.net. “I mean, what if we imagined that greatness wasn’t about power and wealth and fame and all the rest, but instead we measured greatness by how much we share with others, how much we take care of others, how much we love others, how much we serve others. What kind of world would we live in?”
Who wants to live in that world?
Who wants to be first?
Amen.
by Eric Anderson
Watch the Recorded Sermon
Pastor Eric makes changes while he preaches. Sometimes a few, sometimes quite a few.
When Jesus’ disciples argued about who was greatest, Jesus set a new standard. Greatness, he said, was measured by service.
Here’s a transcript:
I’m thinking about the ninth chapter of Mark’s Gospel (Mark 9:30-37). In it, Jesus told his disciples that the Son of Man must be arrested, must be executed, and would then rise again after three days. His disciples didn’t understand what he was talking about.
Jesus asked them what they were talking about along the way, and they didn’t want to tell him. They had apparently been arguing about which one of them was the greatest. Jesus said, if you want to be first, then you have to be last. You have to be the servant of everyone.
If you were looking for a religion that will support your efforts to attain fame and wealth, Christianity is the wrong one. I say that knowing full well that there have been many, many who have claimed Christianity as their faith and have gone on to strive for fame and wealth and power. They’ve achieved them, but I think they’ve achieved them despite their Christianity, and certainly not because of it.
The “Prosperity Gospel,” in my view, is a rank heresy and a betrayal of what Jesus stood for.
Jesus specifically told his disciples that what we are about is service and aid and comfort and guidance and help. We are not about trampling others on the way to the top. I would argue that those who have attained fame claiming the name of Christian have achieved notoriety, rather than fame.
It’s not a popular opinion.
in the end, Jesus said the ones whom God notices are those who serve, those who support, those who help. If you would be Christ’s disciple, continue to dream of fame, if you like. But let your work be oriented towards those around you — and those far away — those who need your support, who can benefit from your guidance, who can lean upon you as you journey together through life.
That’s what I’m thinking. I’m curious to hear what you’re thinking. Leave me your thoughts in the comment section below. I’d love to hear from you.
Jesus warned his disciples not to be ashamed of him – but did he, perhaps, mean not to be ashamed of the way he lived his life?
Here’s a transcript:
I’m thinking that I’m grateful that we have a special guest to bring the message at Church of the Holy Cross this coming Sunday. Ben Anderson is an advocate for people with disabilities. He provides training and guidance for organizations that want to fully include people with disabilities in their services, in their work, and in their purposes. Ben and I met a few years ago — we’re not related, despite the last name — so I’m very glad that we could find a date while he and his wife, Dee, are visiting the Hawaiian Islands, and he could join us and bring us his wisdom.
I am also thinking about the eighth chapter of the Gospel of Mark (Mark 8:31-38). Our passage this week follows one of the better-known passages in the gospels: the one in which Jesus asks who his disciples say that he is, and Peter responded by saying, “You are the Messiah.”
Our passage picks up right after that. Jesus told his disciples what his Messiahship would look like, and it was not the great military and political and religious leader that they had anticipated. For Jesus, Messiahship meant deprivation. It meant humility, and in fact it meant torture and arrest and death — to be followed by resurrection, but I don’t really think Peter heard that part. He took Jesus aside and told him that that was not how it could go.
Jesus responded by saying, “Get behind me Satan,” one of the deepest cuts that he could possibly have offered to one of his friends.
Jesus went on to say his followers could not be ashamed of him. We tend to think of being ashamed of Jesus as being ashamed of the full story of Jesus, of being skeptical of the resurrection, of being skeptical of Jesus’ role in the Trinity, but Jesus raised the word “shame” just after he had talked about the shameful way he expected [people] to treat him. I think when Jesus talked about being ashamed of him, he was also talking about being ashamed of the kind of life to which he summoned his followers, one that did not pursue power, one that did not pursue wealth, one that did not pursue comfort.
Jesus summoned his followers to a way of life that placed others at the center, that sacrificed comfort, safety, life itself for the welfare of those around. And to be honest, as I look about the world of Christianity, I see far more people acting as if they are ashamed of that call than I see people who are ashamed of the miracles, or being part of the Trinity, or of the resurrection. We live as if we are ashamed of the way Jesus lived.
That might be the most shameful thing of all.
Can we do what Simon Peter and his friends did eventually, and follow Jesus down a road of compassion and caring and steadfast love? Can we live proud of the life Jesus lived and the death Jesus died? And in so doing awake one fine morning to a resurrection like Jesus’.
That’s what I’m thinking. I’m curious to hear what you’re thinking. Leave me your thoughts in the comment section below. I’d love to hear from you.
Jesus had already had a busy day. He went to Simon’s house from the synagogue service we heard about last week. He’d taught there, then he’d healed a man beset by a demon or a mental illness there. His friend Simon, whom Jesus would later nickname Peter, seems to have thought it was time to give Jesus a break, get him out of the public eye, and have a nice sabbath dinner.
Or… maybe not. When Simon left his house that morning, did he know his mother-in-law was sick? I grant you that illness can come on pretty quickly – when I get a stomach virus I get about five minutes warning – but it would not surprise me in the least if he left her in the care of his wife and maybe a neighbor when he headed off to the synagogue.
On the way back, do you suppose he thought, “He cast out a demon? What could he do with a fever?”
I think he thought it.
I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. I think he mentioned it. “Say, Jesus, could you perhaps come to my house? We can have dinner there. And, perhaps, you can take a look at my mother-in-law. She’s got a fever.”
For those of you not accustomed to thinking of Jesus’ first disciples as men with families, at least not more than James’ and John’s disappointed father Zebedee left in the boat, or their mother advocating for their promotion, where there’s a mother-in-law, there’s generally a spouse. Some suggest that by the time Simon Peter began following Jesus his wife had died, but curiously in First Corinthians the Apostle Paul mentioned that some of the other apostles, including Jesus’ brothers and Simon Peter, were accompanied on their travels by “a believing wife.” The group of women that accompanied Jesus on his journeys probably included the spouses of his male disciples.
Having endured a lengthy bout of illness and recovery, I feel rather ambivalent about this healing. He took her hand, he lifted her up, and did she get any recovery time? No. Off she went to serve the meal. I’m afraid that some of this is the pure sexism of the first century Mediterranean cultures. Women served in the house, and that was that. But having sat out a couple Sunday services last month, I can tell you this, too: Where I wanted to be during the illness and during the convalescence was right here in this pulpit, even when I wasn’t sure I had the energy to stand. This is my role. This is my calling. This is my place.
Simon’s mother-in-law may have felt much the same. As the senior woman in the house, she was in charge, and failure to serve a distinguished guest – the speaker at the synagogue that day! – may have galled her terribly. As Karoline Lewis writes at Working Preacher, “But, what if the healing of Simon’s mother-in-law was bringing her back to be the mother she always was and that she always wanted to be? And in being brought back to who she was, she became a disciple, called to minister, to serve, like the angels did for Jesus in the wilderness and like the Son of Man, who did not come to be served but to serve?”
Mark used the same word “lifted up” to describe Jesus’ resurrection later in the book. Mark used the same word “to serve” that he used of angels, of the women (not the men!) who traveled with Jesus, and of the Son of Man himself. Debie Thomas asks at JourneyWithJesus.net, “What if Simon’s mother-in-law is not an undervalued woman in a patriarchal system, but the church’s first deacon? The first person Jesus liberates and commissions into service for God?”
Well. If she is, I think she still might have needed some rest. Jesus did.
“In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed.”
We haven’t reached the end of chapter one in Mark, and this is the second time Jesus found a deserted place to pray. The first took place after his baptism. It’s a model for us to remember and to emulate. As Osvaldo Vena writes at Working Preacher, “We need to find our ‘deserted place’ in order to re-energize and charge our spiritual batteries. It is a vital part of our ministry and a good antidote for the cult of personality.” Jesus didn’t stop taking those times away. He went up a mountain to appoint his twelve closest disciples. He was trying to get away from the crowds who followed him such that he fed five thousand people. A trip to a mountain top led to the Transfiguration, which is next week’s Gospel story. And on the night he was betrayed, he left the city to find a garden in which to weep and pray.
Jesus kept making time to restore himself in the presence of God. Jesus kept stepping away from the pressures and the requests to renew himself once again.
Simon and Andrew, James and John, set out on Jesus’ trail to summon him back into Capernaum and resume the work he’d been doing through the evening. I’m pretty sure that when they said, “Everyone is looking for you,” that they expected Jesus to say, “I’ll be right there.”
Unlike John the Baptist, though, Jesus chose to set his ministry in motion. He could have set himself up in Capernaum and waited there for people to show up. They’d have come from miles around, I’d guess. Instead, Jesus said, “Let us go on to the neighboring towns.” He wouldn’t ask people to seek him. He chose to seek them.
As we consider our own calls from God, how do we set our ministries in motion? Once we’ve been revived to our calling like Simon’s mother-in-law, once we’ve been restored by deep time with God, what do we do so that we offer the news of God’s grace and love, rather than simply holding up a sign that says, “God’s love here.” How do reach out rather than demanding that others reach to us? How do we become the one whose hand lifts up, so that someone else regains their strength and, in their own time and with their own call, begins to serve?
We don’t have to look far. There’s a lot of people around us who need that helping hand, and who need that reassurance of spirit.
Let us go on, and lift them up.
Amen.
by Eric Anderson
Watch the Recorded Sermon
Pastor Eric makes changes to his sermon text while he’s preaching. It might even be a good thing.
