@EUCC Sermons

Our scripture text this morning, from the first chapter of Mark’s gospel, happens immediately after the passage that we heard last week, when Pastor Arlene preached about Jesus casting out demons while he preached at the synagogue. And that text happened immediately after the text from Chapter 1 two weeks ago when Pastor Marvin preached about Jesus calling his disciples. In fact, if you had to pick a word that characterizes Chapter 1 of Mark’s gospel, it may very well be the word “immediately.” As Pastor Marvin pointed out, the word “immediately” or the phrases “at once” or “without delay” are used at least 12 times in Chapter 1 alone and at least 40 times in the entire Gospel According to Mark.

Mark is, most scholars agree, the earliest of the four canonical gospels, and it’s also the shortest. As I’ve been pondering Mark’s gospel this week in preparation for this sermon, I came to think of it as the gospel answer to the other TL;DR gospels. For those of you not hip to texting lingo, TL;DR stands for “too long; didn’t read.” If you want to get through the gospel story quickly, read the Gospel of Mark. If you want more meat on the bones, read John, the second shortest gospel, or Matthew, the third shortest gospel, or Luke, who, in 24 chapters has the highest word count of any of the gospels and is in the top twelve of all the biblical books for length. 

As we near the end of Chapter 1 in Mark’s gospel, we have already had Jesus’s baptism, his 40 days in the desert, which takes only two sentences to cover, his calling of the disciples, his preaching in the synagogue for the first time, and the casting out of demons and healing of many people, and the beginnings of his ministry throughout the area of Galilee. All in one chapter. It takes Luke five chapters to get to the calling of the disciples, and it takes Matthew eight chapters to tell us about the healing of Simon Peter’s mother-in-law.

The first Sunday after Epiphany has traditionally been reserved for celebrating the Baptism of Jesus. Originally, the baptism of Christ would be celebrated along with the arrival of the magi on Epiphany. At some point, the Catholic Church created a new feast day to focus solely on the baptism, and the Anglican and Lutheran denominations generally followed along. While we are not super “high church,” here at Eden, observing a traditional feast day gives us an opportunity to ponder the meaning of our faith practices, along with other Christians all over the world. Whether we were baptized as infants or as youth or as adults, whether we were baptized with a little water or a lot, or whether we have not yet been baptized at all, considering the history and practice of baptism helps us answer our own questions about what baptism is and why it matters.

That one of the primary rituals of our faith tradition involves water is not a surprise. As an element vital to the creation and sustaining of all life on earth, water was often seen by ancient peoples as divine, or having divine properties, and most ancient cultures explained the creation of life on earth as beginning in the water. And so water was vital in many early religious rituals.

The season of Advent and Christmas is the one time in the church year when we Protestants are, if not exactly enthusiastic, at least not too uncomfortable with talking about Mary, the mother of Jesus. Ever since Luther—or most likely Calvin—Protestants have had a problem with the Catholic devotion to Mary as the intercessor between sinners and God, choosing to see it as veneration bordering on idolatry, which takes away the proper focus on Christ. So we Protestants tend to keep her in a box for most of the year, taking her out like a favorite sparkly Christmas ornament at Advent and forgetting about her the rest of the time.

For centuries, Mary has been a favorite subject of artists, who have added to the image of sparkly Christmas-ornament Mary, or, as theologian Alyce McKenzie puts it, Mary as a “figure in a snow dome, silent, immobile, gazing at the manger.” The moment of God’s revelation to her that she would bear Jesus, called the Annunciation, has been of particular interest for painters. And there was a particular symbolism that grew up around her that artists used to communicate that this was a painting of the annunciation, particularly in Late Medieval and Early Renaissance paintings.

No sermon today, just a sweet pageant with the children and a fun puppet play with a Christmas message. Watch the video!

I am willing to guess that there are a number of you out there who have never heard a sermon about the biblical characters of Deborah and Jael, and probably a few who have never heard a sermon preached from the book of Judges. I grew up in the church, and among all the many sermons I’ve heard, I don’t remember a single one that focused on these fascinating, powerful women from the Hebrew Bible. And what a shame that is!

I think there are several possible reasons for this. First of all, there’s sexism and patriarchy. I bet you are familiar with one story from Judges: the story of Samson and Delilah. Patriarchy is accustomed to highlighting scandalous women as temptresses. But patriarchy often doesn’t quite know how to approach strong, competent women who take charge and leave their male counterparts in the dust—or, in this case, asleep with a tent peg hammered through the brain. 

Also, the book of Judges is totally problematic, especially to modern, mainline, progressive Christians. It is full of violence, with a God that seems judgmental and oppressive, rather than loving. It’s a hard work to read, and a hard one to preach. Since very few people, including most progressive mainline preachers, have studied the book much, it takes a lot of prep work and teaching to prepare a sermon on it. It’s hard to find the good news in a book that, by the end of it, devolves into chaos and depravity. 

Finally, and this is probably related to this problematic nature of Judges, the book barely appears in the Revised Common Lectionary, the three-year cycle of biblical readings that follows the seasonal liturgical calendar.  Many mainline protestant preachers preach from this lectionary; your preachers here at Eden usually do. But in the Revised Common Lectionary, a reading from the Book of Judges appears only once in the whole three-year cycle. That day is today. It is, at least, the story of Deborah, but it’s only the first seven verses of Chapter Four, which is only a teaser for the story and doesn’t complete the narrative. With such a brief appearance in the cycle—that doesn’t even tell the whole story—it’s no wonder that most preachers take a look at the lectionary, and choose to preach on the gospel reading instead, which is the story of the talents from Matthew. I know you’ve heard a few sermons on that one.

When I was an English teacher, I used to dread final exams. It wasn’t just that I dreaded grading them, which was a huge task, since I almost always gave essay finals. That was a lot of reading at the end of the semester. But it was also the creation of the exam that was hard. Because in order to elicit the information you’re looking for from your students, you have to ask the right questions. Sometimes a poorly worded question will send students off in the wrong direction altogether. There’s a story floating around the Internet that is an example of this. It’s probably not a real story, but it’s a good illustration of this point: there was a geology professor who wanted his students to give some information about the difference between the minerals found on the Earth, and the minerals found on the moon on the final exam. So here was his question: “What are three things that are found on the moon that are not found on the Earth?” One smart aleck student answered it this way: Bruce Springsteen, roller skates, and the Republican party. It’s very important to ask the right question.

One thing to remember about questions, whether they’re being asked by a teacher on a final exam, or just by a lost person asking for directions, is that each question has an agenda behind it. That agenda might be trying to find out if the students were paying attention all semester, or it might be simply how to get to the museum. But every question carries an agenda with it and says something about the person asking the question.