UCC Church of Charlotte

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Sermon for September 20, 2009
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Sunday, September 20, 2009 9:18:56 AM
From:
Phil Hobson   
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To:
Phil Hobson 


Job Description
James 3:13-4:8
Mark 9:30-37

Grace and Peace to you this morning.  Grace and Peace.

I bring you greetings this morning from the General Synod of the
United Church of Christ in Grand Rapids; the United Church,
Chapel-on-the-Hill, in Oak Ridge, Tennessee; the Bayview Association
Methodist Resort in Petoskey; the United Methodist Church of Marshall;
First Congregational Church, United Church of Christ, in Elkhart,
Indiana; and All Souls Community Church in Grand Rapids.

Having worshiped in these places, I have to say it is good to be back.

We have some catching up to do.  Mary and I are looking forward to
sharing with you what we learned from Walter Brueggemann.  I am
looking forward to sharing with you in the study of the book of Acts.
And I want to hear what has been going on around here.

Nice roof, by the way!

I also want to say how thankful I am for those who have worked so hard
this summer.  Pastor Tom, Dawn, Connie, Ramona, the building
committee, the visitation team, those of you who have provided music
each Sunday, the liturgists and preachers, the Christian Ed board
gearing up for a new Sunday School year, and everyone who has been
praying for the church, and everyone else who has kept things running
around here.  I give thanks for each of you and the work you have
done.

The preachers this summer have made my job both easier and more
difficult: more difficult, because you have raised the bar and kept it
up there; easier, because you have preached with honesty and power and
boldness, and I pray I can continue in that vein.

So here we are.  Autumn.  School is back in session.  And unless
something drastic has happened to children in the past few decades, I
am willing to bet that many of them still daydreams of summer
adventure, rather than focusing on their lessons.

We shouldn’t be surprised by this.  We were the same way, weren’t we?
This is nothing new.  Even the disciples weren’t paying attention to
their lessons.

Jesus is telling them what they need in order to understand the coming
days in Jerusalem.  He is telling them what they are about to go
through.  He is offering them what will become their job description.

There are many aspects to being a Christian.  One of the earliest job
descriptions for the followers of Jesus comes from the book of Acts.
There the apostles receive the charge to be witnesses to the
resurrection.  That is their primary role: witness to the
resurrection.

Everything else is secondary.

This job description will take many forms when put into practice:
Healing; Forgiving; Preaching; Teaching; Feeding and taking care of
the widow and the orphan; Standing up to that which would deny life;
Welcoming; Visiting; Listening; Going outside the boundaries of who is
allowed in, so as to befriend the unloved, the unloving, and the
unlovely; Rebuking those who would turn God into a commodity or
religion into a force for oppression.

It happens in all sorts of ways, but all of it is a witness to the
resurrection: witness to the Easter moment of Jesus being raised from
the dead, and to the Easter moments unfolding around them.
Jesus is telling them what the foundation of their lives will be:

The Son of man will be delivered into the hands of men,
and they will kill him;
and when he is killed, after three days he will rise.

There is hope here.  Not the optimism of, “if we are faithful, nothing
bad will happen to us,” but real hope.  The trust that God is in
charge and the story does not end where we think it ought to, or where
the rational arguments of the powers that be would have it end.

This message is not just about what Jesus faces.  It is a message for
those who feel like they have been handed over into the power of
others.  This is a message for those who live in a world that does not
match the dream they have of what the world would be like if the love
of God were truly in charge.  This message of resurrection is for
those whose life has been touched by the powers of death.

We who are baptized into Christ’s death, that we might rise with
Christ into new life, this is our message.

But they did not understand the saying,
and they were afraid to ask him.

Is there anything worse for a teacher than students who don’t
understand, but won’t raise their hand?

The disciples don’t get it, and they are afraid to ask, so they miss
it altogether.  Instead they discuss amongst themselves which of them
is the greatest.

They fall back into the old ways.  They can’t get out of their own
heads. They can’t get over themselves.  They can’t look beyond their
own agenda.

As James points out, the opposite of faith in the resurrection is not
simply lack of faith, but often wrongheaded faith.  It is trust in the ways
of the world.

You desire and do not have;
so you kill.
And you covet and cannot obtain;
so you fight and wage war.
You do not have, because you do not ask.
You ask and do not receive,
because you ask wrongly,
to spend it on your passions.

(Thankfully such behaviors are limited to the first century, right?)

Like any good teacher whose students aren’t getting it, Jesus tries
another way.  They aren’t getting it from his example, so he uses
their own categories.

You want to be first?
You want to be the greatest?
You want to be number one?

(Aren’t these the promises of society for playing the
world’s game better than others?)

You want to be number one?  Serve your neighbor.

You want to lead?  Be a better follower and help your neighbor.

You want to be the greatest?  Humble yourself and care for your neighbor.

You want to be a success?  Be willing to fail according to the world
so that you can love for your neighbor.

Neighbor used to mean those near us and those like us.  It meant that
until Jesus changed the definition; now it means everybody.

You want to be a king?  Take care of the widow, the orphan, the
foreigner in your land, and the poor.

You want to welcome God, welcome a child.

The purpose of bearing witness to the resurrection is not so that we
can live a more fulfilled life within the production and consumption
cycles of society.  The purpose of bearing witness to the resurrection
is to live within the resurrection.

It means living within the body of Christ, this strange and varied
gathering of people seeking to be faithful to the God of resurrection.

It means practicing forgiveness.  Not because forgiveness is nice, or
the Sunday school answer, or the “done thing,” but because forgiveness
is the real practice of God’s love lived out in the messiness of life.
And Jesus is all about the real practice of God’s love lived out in
the messiness of life.  And if we wish to be all about Jesus, then we
too need to be all about the real practice of God’s love lived out in
the messiness of life.

Being a witness to the resurrection is about the Easter moment of
Jesus being raised, and about our own Easter moments of being lifted
up, and about the Easter moment we make possible in the life of our
community and our neighbor by our faithfulness.

All else is secondary.

The time of summer daydreaming is past.  There is witnessing to be done.

Thanks be to God.
Amen.