Snippet from Sunday - December 9 - Roadblocks to Peace

Every year I look forward to unwrapping the simple wooden characters from their newspaper and reenacting the Christmas story with them. The angel will stand over an empty manger near the tree. Mary, Joseph, and a donkey will begin their long journey toward Bethlehem, probably on a bookshelf across the room. The shepherds will be watching their sheep on a windowsill, and the wise men will be off in another room, looking for their star. Step by step, all will make their way across the room toward the manger scene where the Christ Child will be born.

One figure whom I never find in nativity scenes is John the Baptist. True enough, John didn’t gather with Mary, Joseph, and the shepherds in that Bethlehem stable. But neither did the three kings, and still they always manage to make an appearance in our miniature re-creations.

Without fail, however, John shows up in our Scripture readings for Advent. All four Gospels--Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John--begin the story of Jesus’ life and ministry by telling us about this baptizing prophet who was sent to prepare the way for Jesus. Luke, who is our guide for this year’s Advent season, doubles the emphasis on John’s importance by telling John’s birth story alongside that of Jesus. We hear almost as much about Elizabeth, Zechariah, and their miracle baby John as we do about Mary, Joseph, and the truly miraculous birth of Jesus. We can’t read and hear all these stories without getting the feeling that there must be something important about John’s ministry of preparation for those of us who follow Jesus.

(Check out the whole sermon after the jump . . .)

Jan 18, 2009 - Getting to Know the Jesus We Follow

First Presbyterian Church of DuPage - The Five O’Clock
Mk 1.1-13 - “Getting to Know the Jesus We Follow”

We talk a lot at the Five O’Clock about “following Jesus,” about living out the message Jesus preached, about living as the proof of God’s coming kingdom. Last week we brainstormed some ways that we can be living out Jesus’ message more faithfully, as a community of people whose lives are growing more and more closely together and as a community of people who want to help meet the needs of our neighbors as a picture of the sort of kingdom that Jesus brings. During the weeks of Advent, we talked a lot about how God’s people have longed and waited for the kingdom that Jesus announces, the kingdom he will one day finally bring.

My question tonight is “Why?” Why do we talk so much about “kingdom” and “gospel” and “Jesus”? There is a Sunday School answer to this question. When I was younger, a Sunday School teacher--a guy named Eric who I thought was so much cooler than all the other adults I knew--once laughingly said that no matter what question he asked in class, we’d be right if we answered with “Jesus.” In way, we could reply “Jesus” to the question tonight of why we talk about kingdom and gospel and, even, Jesus himself, at the Five O’Clock. But this answer would be true in ways and with a depth that a second grade or junior high Sunday School kid wouldn’t quite grasp. Honestly, it’s true in a way that most of us don’t pick up on initially.

What I have to say tonight is important because we who are becoming part of this Five O’Clock community are just beginning a process that will be hard work, that will be often uncomfortable, we’re beginning something that’s going to ask more of us than we think we have to give. But it’s just this answer of “Jesus”--who he is, what he announced, how he lived and died and, especially, how he lives again--that will gets us through.

We are together trying to faithfully live as the people of God, to be the church in a real and full sense, in an Acts 2 kind of way. This is going to mean getting to know one another better, becoming vulnerable as our live increasingly intersect, as we share our needs and try to help each other out in practical ways. It’s going to mean some awkwardness, as we make social missteps, as we bump into unfounded assumptions. It’s going to mean frustrations as we unfortunately sometimes let each other down, as we find places we disagree, as we unroot hidden prejudices. And it’s going to mean forgiving one another, just as God forgives us, just as we pray in Jesus’ prayer each week. Tonight, it’s going to mean some of us doing the chore of cooking pasta, setting out some plates and silverware, it’s going to be the sweat of washing up dishes afterward.

On our own, we’ll eventually run out. Our patience will wear thin and break, we’ll be tempted to pull out, to hole up in the isolated comforts of a couch and television programs instead coming to meet the raw reality of being together the loving, difficult people of God. And in this, it will be the person and presence of Jesus that sustains us, that refreshes us, that gives us the energy to have one more conversation, to wash one more plate, to drive out into the cold January night one more time.

This is all the reason why I want us to spend the next few months reading through the Gospel of Mark. Mark is a great place to meet Jesus, to get know him better, and to find out what his kingdom and gospel are about. Mark tells a story about Jesus that says so much more than we find on our first read through. The author’s a clever, skillful storyteller, and his book is more like epic poetry or even, perhaps, a riddle, than just a scientific, rigorously precise record of what Jesus said and did. For the longest time, I didn’t like Mark for just these reasons. I would read through it, and I couldn’t make heads or tails of it. He starts off, as we’ll see in a few minutes, without any background story for Jesus. He also ends quite differently from other Gospels, mysteriously even. It wasn’t until I was part of leading a bible study through Mark in college, and I began to read through it over and over, that I began to understand how rich and how real-life, how gritty Mark’s story of Jesus is. I think this is just the sort of picture of Jesus we need as we set about the difficult project of becoming God’s people, something gritty but also something that requires commitment, dedication to bear fruit.