The meeting point

So, it has been awhile since I wrote a new blog, and to be honest this is only partly a new blog, well its a new blog entirely but most of what is about to be read has been written more than a year ago.

Why?

Because I am preaching through the book of Mark and this week is Mark 14 and I decided to preach on verses 32-42 which is Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. I finished my outline, which is how I do things nowadays and went to save my progress. Low and behold I have already given a sermon on this exact same passage. I wrote that one about a year and a half ago, back when I actually wrote out my entire sermons. I am told that my sermons are better now that I don't write them out, but sometimes I wish I still did, so that I could more easily point to what I had to say.

As I said it has been almost a year and a half, but a lot of what I am going to say tomorrow I said back then, which says something about me consistently being in a place of struggling to a line my will with God's will. To that end I thought I would share my sermon from back then and my outline for tomorrow, wait til you get a load of this.

Everybody Hurts Mark 14:32-42 March 4, 2012

Last week the crowd, this week the garden.  I can only imagine what it must have been like to be with Jesus in that last week.  And it is a fool’s task to try to convey what it may have been like, but we try anyway, because what Jesus went through he went through for us.  The highs and the lows, all for us, so that we would know that he knows what this life is like.  When Jesus comes to the garden he is in pain, a pain that he has never known, a pain that feels like death.  He’s coming up against it now, it may have always been the destination but now its just around the bend.  When I am at work sometimes it goes slow and others it goes fast, but somehow the last hour always goes by at a pretty good pace.  When I look at the clock and know I am almost free everything is all right.  Jesus is coming up to it as well, but for him everything is not all right, most of it is all wrong.

So he gets his closest followers together and he goes to pray.  That is where Jesus finds solace that is where he recharges his batteries, in prayer.  He asks them to stay awake with him, but then he goes off a ways from them, and he prays.  He prays a prayer that we pray all the time.  He asks for a different path, an easier one, one that doesn't require what his current one is about to require.  I have prayed that prayer a thousand times, asking for the difficulties to find someone else to rest on, asking that today might be a little easier than I think it is about to be.  And that is where my prayer usually ends, don’t let it be, Jesus’ goes a little further.  Let this cup pass from me, but if not, not my will but thine.

I don’t know about you but I so often forget that last part, which means I end my prayers my will, thank you very much. What about you how do you end your prayers do we ask for our will or do we ask for God’s will?  So, Jesus prayed and then he went back to his friends to talk to them, and finds them asleep.  So he prays again, and again they fall asleep.  And he prays again and again they fall sleep, then trouble comes.  Or was it already there?  Today we are going to be looking at Jesus’ time in the garden, specifically we are going to be looking at the example that Jesus gives us of a person in trouble.  We all face bad times in our lives but when Jesus faced bad times he found strength in community he found strength in prayer and he found strength in accepting God’s will.

Strength in Community

The first place that Jesus found strength was in community.  To a degree this seems a little odd, after all just a few verses earlier Jesus told his followers that every single one of them would fall away.  He knew that each one would turn tail and run once things didn't go the way they thought they should.  Yet he still found strength in their company, he yearned for it still.  We know this because he takes three of them with him when he goes to pray, but not only that time and time again he comes to them and wants them to be alert.  Jesus knows that Judas will soon be bringing the guards to arrest him, so it is not that Jesus is looking for bodyguards, no what Jesus wants is friends.

Jesus wants someone to talk to, someone he can rely on and his friends keep falling asleep.  His friends who, each in their turn claimed that they would be by his side no matter what came against him.  You have Peter who just a few verses earlier claimed that even if every other disciple left he would stay till the end.  In addition you have James and John who after submitting a request to be at his right and left hand in heaven then staked their own claim that they could drink whatever cup and Jesus had to drink.  But here they all fall asleep, the real trouble hasn’t even come yet and they are already falling asleep.  Have you ever been there?  That place where life has you down and all you really want is a friend to stand by your side?  I know I have, again and again.

There was this one time in college where my girlfriend at the time broke up with me and I was devastated, but my friend R.W. was there to hold on to me as I cried.  There was another time during my freshman year of college where I had to miss the first month of classes in order to have a biopsy done home in West Virginia.  My friend Kevin drove me to Anderson so that I could meet with my professors and get the school work that I would be missing, we ended up driving back in a snowstorm.

At the same time there have been times when I have really needed a friend and my friends have not be there for me.  I have this really good friend named Scott, I would call Scott my best friend, we have been together through some really tough times, but there was one time when I was questioning my call to ministry and I was looking for some reassurance that I was walking the right path.  Luckily I talked to several friends about it, because I talked to Scott and because I believed something that he did not, he told me that I had no right to be a pastor.  Interestingly enough Scott now agrees with me on that particular issue.

While we have times that our friends are there for us we, unfortunately also have those times when are friends are not there for us.  Jesus understands both those times, because like us he has been there.  But even though Jesus knew that his friends weren't always going to be there for him, he still held out hope and love that they would be.  The same must be said for us, yes, by opening ourselves up to our friends, to community, there is always a chance that we could be hurt.  But if we do not open ourselves up we will never have the chance of being loved in return, and if we don’t have a chance to be loved, what kind of life is that?

Strength in Prayer

In addition to finding strength in community Jesus also found strength in prayer.  Time and time again we see Jesus going off to be alone in prayer in the gospels.  As I stated earlier it is in prayer that Jesus is recharged.  But this time Jesus isn’t looking for a recharge he is looking for a way out.  Jesus collapses on the ground in desperate prayer for relief from his impending suffering. He asks that if it’s possible, the hour of his suffering before him might pass. He addresses God as Abba, which is an Aramaic word that means dad or even daddy.

“Abba, Father.” What a daring way to approach God, not as King, not as Ruler, not as Master, but as Father, even as Dad. How audacious, to approach God that way. Yet as followers of Jesus, that’s exactly how we’re invited to come to God in prayer. Romans 8:15 says, For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, "Abba, Father." In seminary there was this guy named Sam who prayed in what I considered a weird way.  He always talked about climbing onto God’s lap and snuggling against his chest.  It always struck me as awkward, but maybe to an extent that is how we should come to God, not as one who is far above us but as a loving parent.
Jesus’ prayer in the garden follows the pattern of an Old Testament prayer of lament. A lament is a cry of deep agony or grief. Yet the Psalms are full of prayers of lament. There are over fifty distinct prayers of lament found in the Old Testament book of Psalms. In addition one entire book of the Old Testament is titled Lamentations.

A prayer of lament usually begins with a desperate plea for help, a cry for relief from some hopeless situation. Then there’s usually a transition from desperation to assurance that God has heard the request and that he will respond with love. Most laments begin with a desperate plea and end with hopeful praise. Jesus’ prayer follows this same pattern, beginning with a desperate plea to be free from the coming hour, to not have to drink the cup of God’s wrath, followed by an affirmation that God has all power to do anything, concluding with a surrender to God’s will.

As Bible scholar David Garland says “In Gethsemane, Jesus meets the dreadful silence of heaven. There is no reassuring voice from heaven….No dove descends…Jesus overcomes the silence, fights off the human temptation to do as he wills, and through prayer acquiesces to God’s will” (Garland 541).

When we see bad things happening coming down the pike in our lives, we’d do well to follow that same pattern. Too often instead of praying the kind of intimate, honest prayer that Jesus prays, we try to think happy thoughts and sing happy songs. We try to persuade ourselves that it’s not really a train at the end of the tunnel, that God would never allow terrible tragedy to hit us. Walter Brueggemann, another Bible scholar, says, “Much Christian spirituality is romantic and unreal a frightened, numb denial that does not want to acknowledge the disorientation of life.” Yet if God allowed his beloved Son to experience suffering, why would we think we’re exempt from such suffering? The prayer of lament we see in Jesus should be a normal part of our Christian experience.

Let’s face it God knows the truth of how we feel, so we might as well be honest in our prayers.  In addition God can take whatever we feel about any situation.  If we are unhappy God can take it.  If we’re sad God can take it.  If we need to yell at God, it is allowed.  Our lives are not happy, happy joy, joy so why should are prayers have to be.  Jesus was honest with God, honest enough to ask for the cup to be taken.  He was honest enough to ask why he was forsaken on the cross, I think that this means that we can be honest with God as well.

Strength in following surrendering to God’s Will

So, like Jesus we should be attempting to find strength in community and like him we should be finding strength in prayer.  In addition we also need to follow Jesus’ example and find strength in surrendering to God’s will. As I said earlier so often when I pray I end with an unspoken ‘my will’ while Jesus ends with a spoken ‘they will.’  It shouldn’t be a surprise that Jesus would pray this way, after all in the Sermon on the Mount when he is teaching his disciples how to pray he uses word like ‘thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.’

Not only is Jesus willing to pray this way but he is also willing to be changed should God not acquiesce to his way of thinking.  And we know that he is changed through his surrender, because the first two times he returns he is asking why his friends couldn’t stay awake, and the third time Jesus come back resolute, knowing that the time is at hand.  In addition if we look into the future we see a calm Jesus who greets him betrayer in love, who speaks to the guards as if they could have taken him at anytime.  We see a Jesus who is calm before the Sanhedrin and before Pilate.  Jesus surrendered and through that was given strength, the same must be said for each of us.

I have often wondered how to know if something is or is not God’s will.  I have often prayed for God to enlighten me so that I would know which path to walk, and often I have heard nothing.  And so I just keep walking the path that I’m on, hoping that if I ever need to walk a different road I will know it.  I think that the same can be said of Jesus in the garden.  After all we have Jesus’ prayer recorded in scripture, but we have no response recorded.  I think this means one of two things, either God responded verbally and we simply have no record of it, or it means that God didn’t respond, it is this option that I think is more likely.  I say this because later Jesus does cry out from the cross, why!

You see we can submit to God’s will even though we are not always sure what that will is.  For instance we can add a ‘thy will’ to the end of our prayers, realizing that what we want may not be the best thing for us to have, and allowing God to insert us into his will as opposed to inserting God into ours.

I believe that more than anything else following Jesus example requires a lot of faith.  The faith of a mustard seed, the faith of a child.  I am sure you have heard the story before of a parent holding out their hands and telling their child to jump, and the son or daughter with no thought jumps, because they know instinctively that their parent will catch them.  The same must be said of us, that we are willing to jump toward God’s open arms secure in the knowledge that if we find strength in community and prayer we will also find strength in God’s will, that we will jump and that God will catch us like the Abba that he is.

And now my outline for tomorrow.

Gethsemane Mark 14:32-42               August 25, 2013

Who’s God to you? : the omnis, a vending machine, something cold and distant, a master to your slave, a loving parent/friend

What do you want? : there are really only two options: your will or God’s will

What will you do? : prayer is an action that requires further action, not fishing

Peace and Love,

Pastor K

On the Way to the Way 3: To Become Like a Child

This particular blog could really be on either one of my blogs, because at base it is a rehash of my sermon from this past Sunday, but it also has a strong foot planted in The Sacred Journey book that I have been reading. To that end I will post it here.

You already know that I have been reading The Sacred Journey (which I finished by the way) but you most likely don't know that I have been preaching through the Gospel of Mark chapter by chapter for the past 10 weeks. To that end I found myself in chapter 10 this past week. I had narrowed it down to either preaching about verses 13-16 about Jesus' encounter with the little children or verses 35-45 about James and John's request to be on Jesus' left and right hand in heaven.

And then I read this in The Sacred Journey:
“Every pilgrimage is a journey backward. Every pilgrim’s step is a step toward childhood. And that, in the paradoxical logic of the kingdom, is the only way to go forward. It is only children who inherit the kingdom.”

I took that as a sign and decided to focus on verses 13-16.

Prior to 8 and a half months ago I had a mental understanding of what having faith like a child was. I remember the oft quoted story about a father telling his child to jump and the child jumps without hesitation. It was a simple story, and it spoke of a child's trust in his father, but that's about it. But then Henry came into my life (our life really) and my understanding of how a child acts and what a child is expanded dramatically. To that end I believe that there are at least three aspects of a child that we need to make our own if we want to inherit the kingdom that Jesus says is only open to us if we receive it as children.

The first thing that we need to obtain are the eyes of a child. So often we have created a life of normalcy, we do the same things each day, we go the same places, we eat the same food, we see the same things. It often seems that the goal of adulthood is to completely expunge surprise and spontaneous experience from our lives. But in the eyes of a child everything is new, the ordinary becomes the extraordinary.

For instance, we took Henry on his first journey to the zoo the other day. I was under the impression that Henry would be amazed by the animals, but to be honest I am not sure if Henry realized that there were actually animals at the zoo. So often he never got past the people that were closer to him. At one point in the day we arrived at the Cheetah enclosure, I picked Henry up out of his stroller so that he might be able to have a better view, which he did, of the fence. It was a fence made of cylindrical poles of wood, and to Henry it was amazing, he never took his eyes off that fence, didn't take his hands off it until I pulled him away.

To me that fence was completely irrelevant, after all we were viewing the cheetahs from a bridge, they might be able to leap that high, but they seemed too lazy to do it. To me the fence was overlooked, but to Henry the fence was the excitement. We need to recapture those eyes, so that the ordinary becomes the extraordinary, and everything will be new again.

The second thing that I think we need to reacquire is a child’s vulnerability and need for dependency. Henry is 8 and a half months old and is just now learning to pick up food and put it in his mouth, he is incapable of getting that food ready though, of making a bottle, of changing his diaper, of even getting out of bed, he constantly wants to lunge off of couches and beds, he wants to play with plastic bags and tip over fans and lamps, he is completely dependent on Mary and I. I am not sure how long Henry would be able to survive on his own, maybe a day, perhaps only a few hours. Children are vulnerable and it requires them to be dependent on others, the same is true for us, we just overlook that fact.

Too often in our lives we work so hard for a little more control. We speak about pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps, which may have made illustrative sense back in the day. But if we are honest we have never done anything by ourselves, at least not completely. We have had influences, both good and bad, in our lives that have helped shape who we are today. At the very least we needed someone to feed us before we could do it. The same thing is true about our relationship with God, too often we convince ourselves that we can take care of it all, and only turn to God when things finally get out of control.

A child is completely dependent on his/her parents and feels no shame in it. It doesn't chastise itself for not being able to change a diaper, heck most of the time it doesn't even stay still long enough for the diaper to be changed properly. We need to once again get to the place where we are completely dependent on God, and perhaps if we do we will find more available to us than we ever knew.

The third, and final thing for my purpose, that we need reacquire is a child's heart, their love. Some months ago I preached about 1 Corinthians 13, and about how the love that’s mentioned is not human romantic love, but God’s love. You don't think so? Ask yourself the last time your spouse/girlfriend/parent/sibling/neighbor/ friend did something to you that you did not like, and if you have an answer you can cross yourself off the 1 Corinthian 13 love list because you seem to keep a record of wrong.

I still agree that it is about God's love, but I am beginning to think that it is also the love of a child, at least in part, because a child loves without cynicism, without suspicion, without envy, and as soon as you show love to them they completely forget how long they were in that crib or dirty diaper or were hungry. By and large Henry is not a loud crier, but when he is hungry it tends to go up a few decibels, and it is a cry where the tears run down his cheeks and his mouth waters also. He looks at you as if you are willing to let him starve, even after you start getting his bottle ready, it is a look as if you never loved him and never will. Yet almost the moment the bottle touches his lips the cry goes away and he looks at you with a brightness in his eyes that conveys that he loves you once again.

We hold onto things, we do things for selfish reasons, we fail time and time again, but a child forgive and lets you start anew, a child loves even through the hard times, even through the times of silence. We need to re-harness that love, that faith.

To that end, as Charles Foster states our daily prayer should be “Make me a child, make me a child, make me a child.” I long to rekindle the childish faith inside, and while I hope to rekindle it before I set foot on my pilgrimage I am hopeful that if I have not fully embraced it I will be able to mile after mile on my journey backwards.

Buen Camino,
Pastor K