Follow me, and I will make you fish for people (Mark 1:17).

“Follow me.”  One of the very first directives uttered by Jesus in Mark’s gospel.  Though I love a good Christmas birth story, adorned with angels, shepherds, and a babe wrapped in swaddling cloths, Mark doesn’t give us that.  For Mark, there’s no time for those details.  The babe wrapped in swaddling cloths has a job to do.  To proclaim the arrival of God’s Kingdom, and to duke it out with the powers-that-be; the institutions that would stand in God’s way.

What strikes me in this Sunday’s gospel reading is the urgency of Jesus’ message.  Without even taking a breath, Jesus’ call to repentance is followed by the call to follow.  In the six verses found in this Sunday’s gospel, Jesus has seditiously announced the presence of God’s Kingdom over and against that of Caesar, and called four lowly, off-the-radar, fishermen to follow him.

 

Jesus’ message and actions are urgent; there’s no time to create lists; no time for committees to be formed; no time for mission statements to be drafted; no time to give 2 weeks’ notice to the boss. The Kingdom of God train has pulled into the station and it’s time to climb aboard.

Now more than ever we need to hear this sense of God’s urgency and be challenged by its implications. It is this Kingdom of God urgency that challenges us to take on Caesar; to speak out in the face of injustice; to not be moderate or neutral on issues of inequity or the dehumanization of those less powerful; to not be silent when families are torn apart by cruel and unjust immigration policies; to not turn the other way when women are routinely harassed by powerful men who are nothing more than disgusting sexual predators; to not turn a blind eye when the President of the most powerful nation on the planet blatantly reveals his racist bias by degrading with vulgar language black and brown people and their countries of origin.

In all of this, where is the church’s Kingdom of God voice?  Where is our Kingdom of God urgency to right what is clearly wrong?  Now more than ever, Martin Luther King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail is calling out to us.  These urgent words penned 54 years ago to an inactive church are as applicable to us now as they were then.  

With prophetic courage and urgency, Dr. King wrote,

“So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an archdefender of the status quo.  Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church’s silent – and often even vocal – sanction of things as they are.”

He goes on to write, “If today’s church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club…”

As your pastor, I can assure you of this:  I will not be an activities director of a social club.  I am a pastor; I am your pastor and as such I will continue to seek ways in which we as a community of faith – a Kingdom of God community – can discern God’s will, witness God’s love, while following his Son to a Jerusalem Cross and beyond.  If that means calling out powerful abusers then so be it.  If it means protecting the powerless, Harriet Tubman style, then so be it.  

We follow Christ, and no one else, therefore we cannot keep silent.  Following Christ, with voices raised and hands outstretched we will change the world.

Peace and Love,

Pastor Doug

A Different Christmas Story

Just a few days ago we gathered in worship around the glorious story of shepherds and angels; “a poor lowly stable ”; and a young couple with their newborn baby “wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.”  Our joy could hardly be contained as we loudly sang “O Come All Ye Faithful” or in hushed tones with candles in hand sang of a “Silent night”, where all is “calm” and “bright.”  As the days of Christmas have progressed, the three magi figurines have been making their way across our sanctuary chancel to take their place at the Nativity scene on Epiphany.  As they do, we will hear a very different Christmas story. 

This coming Sunday we will hear that God’s good news of great joy is not good news to everyone; especially by those in positions of power.  We will hear of an earthly king who in his narcissistic paranoia is so threatened by the birth announcement of another king, that he desperately seeks out this newborn in order to kill him.  This is certainly not a story told in any Christmas pageants I’ve ever seen.  And yet it is a critical part of our story.  We know that for his whole life, this newborn king will be a marked man, one day being tortured and killed on a cross for bearing witness to God’s Kingdom over and against those of Herod and Caesar; what the biblical scholar Raymond Brown refers to as “An Adult Christ at Christmas.”

I’m not completely sure where my sermon is going on Sunday.  I’m intrigued by the juxtaposition of outsider magi, who get what God is doing, to insider religious folk who do not.

I also can’t help but wonder who the Herods and Caesars of this world are and what the church’s voice could and should be in the midst of it all.  Am I a religious insider who thinks I’ve got God all figured out and am therefore closed to God’s new revelations?   Am I one who craves my own power, desiring that my will be done over and against that of God?  It’s way too easy for me to point to powerful world leaders and assign Herod’s name to them; though there may be some wisdom in that.  But am I just as capable of seeking to eliminate anything or anyone that I perceive is a threat to my White, male power?

Toward the end of Matthew’s gospel, the adult Jesus tells us that what we do to the least among us, we do to him.  What are the implications of that when put in the light of this Sunday’s gospel reading?  Are tax laws that remove 13 million people from health care coverage akin to Herod seeking to kill the infant Jesus?

These are all valid questions with which people of faith must wrestle and I invite you into this holy struggle of which I don’t pretend to have easy answers.  There is nothing simple about this Christmas story.  For it is far more than just an account of a birth, It is the story of God dwelling with us and our response to that new reality.

On the journey with you,

Pastor Doug