Sermon for Sunday, March 5, 2006A TIME FOR REMEMBERINGbyBy Rev. Cindy Bates |
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Scripture: Mark 1:9-15
Author Mark McMinn in his book, Finding Our Way Back Home: Turning Back to What Matters Most, says “Remembering is a spiritual endeavor. In remembering we create space for God to meet us on our journey, and we allow our lives to be centered in the security of God’s love.” Remembering is a theme in Scripture, especially throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, our Old Testament. There, we are constantly reminded to remember the faithfulness of God, which is almost always in contrast to the forgetfulness of God’s people. I believe it is the spiritual endeavor of remembering that we are about when we, as Christians, observe the season of Lent. It is a time when we remember who and whose we are. So, as we gather together this day, the first Sunday on our Lenten journey, it is imperative that we remember Jesus. And this story, from the Gospel of Mark, is a very good place to begin. Here, in these first few verses from our earliest Gospel, we learn some very important things about Jesus. He was baptized, and at his baptism God proclaimed, “You are my beloved”, and then Jesus immediately went into the wilderness where he was confronted by evil and wild beasts, where, also, angels waited on him. Now, often, when we read something like this about the life of Jesus, I think our response is one of awe or admiration, which is so appropriate as we look at his life and his relationship to God. But, I also fear that, when we look at Jesus and the life he lived, we have difficulty really relating his life to our own life because we know we can never be “good enough” or “obedient enough” or “courageous enough” to be like Jesus, so it can get a little confusing, maybe even a little ambiguous when trying to discern, “What does it really mean to be a follower of Jesus Christ?” What does it mean to follow him if we can never believe we can live as he lived? It can get even more confusing for us when we read in the Gospel of John that Jesus said, “Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do, and, in fact, will do greater works than these….” Can any of us, even begin to say, “We can do greater works than Jesus?” That would be considered blasphemous and yet, what was he saying about who he was and who we could be as his followers? Who Jesus was and what his life was all about had to do with his relationship with God, who he knew himself to be in God’s love. According to Mark, when Jesus was baptized to begin his ministry, he heard God saying he was God’s beloved son. He was loved and blessed by God and it was only after that pronouncement, that affirmation that he began to live out his calling. In remembering this moment in Jesus’ life, how do we connect that to our life and who we are? Henri Nouwen, priest and prolific writer on the subject of spirituality said this about our connection to this moment in the life of Jesus. “….the spiritual life is a life in which you gradually learn to listen to a voice that says, ‘You are beloved and on you my favor rests.’” (Or as in today’s translation, “with you I am well pleased.”) “That is where the spiritual life starts, claiming the voice that calls us the beloved.” Can we even go there? Can we really comprehend God’s love for us in such a personal way? Henri Nouwen was so convinced of our need to understand this passage of scripture as the foundation for our spiritual life that he wrote a book entitled, “The Life of the Beloved.” In this book he describes what he learned about being loved by God from living in a community with persons with profound physical and mental disabilities, persons who often feel unlovable. He tells the story of a severely handicapped woman named Janet who came up to Henri at worship service one day and said, “Henri, can you bless me?” He then made the sign of the cross on her forehead. And she said to him, “Henri it doesn’t work. No, that is not what I mean.” Henri was embarrassed and said, “I gave you a blessing.” And she said, “No, I want to be blessed.” He could not understand what she meant. He turned to all of the other people at the service and said, “Janet wants a blessing.” He had on a long robe with long sleeves and all the liturgical vestments that would make him viable as someone who could bless someone but he did not know what to do. At that point she again said, “I want to be blessed”, and put her head against his chest. He said he spontaneously put his arms around her, held her, looked into her eyes and said, “Blessed are you, Janet. You know how much we love you. You know how important you are. You know what a good woman you are.” She looked at Henri and said, “Yes, yes, yes, I know.” Henri said he could see all sorts of energy coming back to her. She seemed to be relieved. She realized again that she was blessed. She was loved. And she immediately went back to her place. Then other people began to say, “I want that kind of blessing too.” Henri said, “All these people came to me and I found myself embracing people….and then one of the people in the community who was a staff worker who assisted the handicapped came up to him and said, “Henri can I have a blessing too”? And Henri recalled the powerful moment of looking into the eyes of this big guy, a football player who was not handicapped in the same ways as the others, but how much he still needed the assurance of being blessed, being loved. So Henri put his hand on John’s shoulder and said, “John, you are blessed. You are a good person. God loves you. We love you. You are important.” Nouwen asks, “Can you claim that and live as the blessed one?” We need that connection, that assurance, that like Jesus, we are known, we are loved, we are chosen, we are blessed by God. That is the beginning point for all that follows. What follows for Jesus is that he experiences the wilderness. He experiences temptation and darkness and evil and he survives. And the very next thing he does is start proclaiming, “the good news of God.” What is it that we need to remember about this part of the story? I look at spending 40 days in the wilderness with wild beasts and evil all around me and knowing my propensity for fear and my lack of courage I immediately think, “O God please don’t ever ask me to do that. I wouldn’t survive.” And yet, doesn’t life offer up wilderness experiences, temptation experiences, brushes with evil for all of us? Garrison Keillor, modern day theologian, that has used the comedy radio medium for decades, tells us that his weekly show is sponsored by “Powdermilk Biscuits”, those incredible biscuits that come in a blue tin. He says, “They are the biscuits that give shy people the courage the do the job that needs to be done.” I wish I could eat one of those biscuits for breakfast every morning. I wish I could order cases of those biscuits and have you eat one every morning! How can we ever have the courage to face what Jesus had to face and be his faithful followers? I think that word courage is very important to us. The meaning of the word courage comes from the old French version for the word heart, cuer. Courage means to do something with heart. Our modern dictionary goes on to define courage as “the mental or moral strength to venture, persevere and withstand danger, fear or difficulty.” In some ways our modern society has made courage a mental, intellectual trait but I believe for Jesus it was much more a heart thing. I want to remember that when I need courage in my own life. When it comes to courage, I don’t mean to say we shouldn’t be there in our heads, but that seems only secondary to the real source of our courage. Rachel Naomi Remen a seasoned medical doctor says in her book, My Grandfather’s Blessings, “The heart has the power to transform experience. No matter what we do, finding fulfillment may require learning to cultivate the heart and its capacity for meaning in the same way we are taught to pursue knowledge or expertise. We will need to connect intimately to the life around us. Knowledge alone will not help us to live well or serve well.” I think that Jesus told us over and over that we need to pay attention to our heart and he wasn’t talking about cardiovascular exercise, although that’s a very good thing. Joan Chittister in her book, Scarred by Struggle, Transformed by Hope talks about courage and heart this way: “The truth is that courage is what carries people through an average day. It is not an action, it is an attitude. It is the spiritual strength that gives direction in the midst of confusion….courage is what you do when your heart is ready.” If we really believe that our faith is all about a relationship with God and we most profoundly understand that relationship through Jesus, the Christ, our heart has to be engaged if that faith is going to be real. Please know that I am not saying that we should not rely on our reason and intellect in shaping and understanding our faith. As United Methodists we know our founder, John Wesley, believed we needed to be a thinking people so we could be articulate and know in our heads what we believe. But we also need to remember that Wesley was never satisfied with his own life and ministry until he had what he always referred to as his “heartwarming experience”, an experience when he finally knew in his heart that he was loved by God. As we journey through Lent together, remembering the life and teachings of Jesus, I would like to challenge you to contemplate what it might mean to connect with your faith and the author of that faith from your heart and not just your head. I really believe if we remember Jesus and try to understand who he was and is only from an intellectual perspective, we will never have the courage, the heart, to live as he lived. But, when we begin to understand what moved him, how he responded to being a beloved child of God and how his courage, his heart could withstand any danger that could come to him in the wilderness, we too, can live being beloved by God, knowing we can withstand even times of wilderness. The ancient poet Basho once said, “I do not seek to follow in the footsteps of those of old. I seek the things they sought.” I do not think as followers of Jesus we are asked to follow in his footsteps and to live his life. I do believe we are asked to seek to know his heart. Gary and Bonnie are going to share a Warren Zevon song with us entitled, “Keep Me In Your Heart.” Warren wrote this song at a time when he knew his life was coming to an end. The words can have many layers of meaning. As we listen to these words this morning I would like us to think about what it means during this Lenten season to remember who we are asked to follow and what it means to keep him in our hearts as I believe we are all kept in the heart of God. |
