Andy James

wandering the web since 1997

Presbyterian minister in Atlanta.
Music lover.
Found beer in seminary.

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Our Song of Joy

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a sermon on 1 Samuel 1:4-20; 2:1-10
preached on November 15, 2015, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

It could have been the middle of the summer, but the days were dark and gloomy in Israel. The governmental structures to lead and guide the people had broken down, the religious institutions had become more focused on self-preservation than anything else, and the threats from the outside were as strong as ever.

It was not a time for singing songs of joy of any sort, especially not for Hannah. Beyond the struggles of the world around her, she bore the great weight of being childless. She had a faithful and loving husband who cared for her quite well, but the world around her demanded that she have a child of her own in order to be fully human. One truly inconsiderate person kept bugging her about it over and over again, and she entered a deep depression. Not even the gentle and loving presence of her husband—or extra gifts from him!—could comfort her.

She finally went up to the temple to pray. “O Lord, look on me! See my misery, and do not forget me. Give me a son, and I will offer him to be your faithful servant even from the first days of his life.” She continued in prayer, her words emerging silently from her heart with such great longing that she could not help but mouth the words. She sought a way out of her predicament, a new possibility for her life in those dark days, a chance to sing a song of joy for herself and for the world.

We know what it is like to be Hannah. Our pain and hurt may not be exactly the same as hers—we may not struggle with the same issues of being barren in a culture where bearing children was central—but we certainly know what it is like to struggle to sing songs of joy. When the world seems to be breaking down around us, when violence and terror strike so often, when friends and family die before their time, when we become paralyzed with fear, we join Hannah in those heartfelt prayers that things will be different, that the darkness will end, that the world will come together, that joy can be our song.

Hannah walked away from her prayer at the temple with uncertainty and confusion. She didn’t really know what to expect in response. Would God grant her petition? Would God give her a son that she would then give back to God as she had promised? Even the priest at the temple had confronted her while she was praying, concerned that her heartfelt prayers were an expression not of her strong spirit but rather some strong wine! When Hannah explained her anxiety and vexation to him, he sent her on her way with his own prayer that God would grant her petition. When Hannah returned home, her mind was more at ease. Something was changing. She and her husband soon conceived a son, and when he was born, she named him Samuel. Hannah could finally make joy her song.

Hannah raised her voice after Samuel’s birth to offer the song of joy and praise that concludes our reading this morning. She began by offering praise to God for the particular gift she has received—“My heart exults in the LORD; my strength is exalted in my God,” she exclaims—but her thanksgiving for the presence of God in her own life was only the beginning. Hannah moved beyond her own life to lift up words of praise for all that God does in the world to make things different and new and to show God’s way of peace, justice, and wholeness to all. “The bows of the mighty are broken… those who were hungry are fat with spoil… the barren has borne seven… the LORD raises up the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap.”

In her song, Hannah praised God for her gifts but made it clear that God was and is doing so much more beyond her, bringing justice for all people and offering a new way of life to the world, with a particular preference for those who are poor or in need. She sang because new life had emerged out of what seemed to be her barren womb—and because God continues to bring new life in all places that seem so barren and empty. Hannah responded with this song of joy because she had been a beneficiary of this incredible love, and her song expressed her deep gratitude for this incredible gift of a son and for God’s amazing power that is making all things new. Because of the blessings she received, because of God’s incredible work in the world, and because of God’s new thing that begins anew each and every day, Hannah made joy her song.

Even with the distance of several millennia, we too have the gift of sharing this song in our world and our lives. Amid the difficulty and challenge of our lives and our world, we can offer our praise to God as we see God’s presence revealed in new and deeper ways. Hannah’s song has been the model for countless others over the ages, most notably Mary’s song of praise as she fully embraced the gift that would come to her in being the mother of Jesus, and it can give us a basis for our praise, too. Just like Hannah, we too have had moments of incredible joy and blessing in our lives. We too have known God’s gracious and merciful response to our prayers. We too have seen God doing incredible things beyond our lives in all the world. And we too can sing a song of praise for God’s new thing beginning anew each and every day.

Our songs of praise in this place are a great place to begin, but they truly are only the beginning, just as this song was for Hannah. She not only sang a beautiful song—she took incredible and faithful action in offering up Samuel to the service of God. Like Hannah, our songs of joy need more than beautiful and catchy melodies—God calls us to sing praise with our heart and soul and voice, with the whole of our being, with all the gifts that give us life and breath, so that all creation might join our praise.

In these days, as we prepare for a new calendar year and bring a request for your support of the church in the next twelve months, I hope and pray that you will think of this as an opportunity for a joyous response. God is at work in our midst, and we have the gift of offering our response of joy and praise, not just in our words and songs and prayers here on Sundays but also in the gifts of time, talent, and money that support what God is doing in this place. Like Hannah, we begin our response with prayer for those things that so often seem to be missing from this journey of life together. We long for others to join us on this journey. We long for an end to the violence and strife that mark our world and occupy our attention. We long to be freed from worry about the mechanics of our life together. And we long for God’s new way to take more complete root in our midst.

Still, this is only the beginning of our response, for our prayers of deep longing soon turn to joy amid the great gifts that we have been given and are even more privileged to share. As we join in mission and ministry in this community and around our world, our joyful and faithful response empowers the church to bear witness to God’s love in so many times and places that go far beyond our imagination. And as we walk together, we find incredible signs of what God is doing in us and in our world to make all things new—and the astounding possibilities for where God invites us to join in!

The incredible thing about Hannah’s song —and our song of response—is that God uses these words of praise as a beginning for something new and something more. Just as Hannah offered the exultation of her heart, strength, and mouth, God works in and through the incredible gifts of our time, talent, and treasure to make all things new. God takes the little gifts we offer and expands them into something more. God joins our songs of praise in so many varied forms with those of others around us to continue the incredible things that God is doing in the world. In the coming week, you’ll hear a bit more about this story in your mailbox, about how you can join in Hannah’s song of joy and hope in our life together, and you’ll also receive a pledge card asking for you to consider what you can offer as part of a commitment to our song of joy and praise in this place.

As we consider our response to all these gifts and our commitment to our life together in this place over the coming year, may God give us strength to join with Hannah, Mary, and countless others across the ages, lifting our song of joy, thanksgiving, and praise for all that God has done and is doing in us and in our world to make all things new. Lord, come quickly! Amen.

A Small Gift, A Big Challenge

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a sermon on Mark 12:38-44
preached on November 8, 2015, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

There are few stories in the Bible that can be immediately recognized through a single phrase, but our reading from Mark this morning is certainly one of them. If someone mentions “the widow’s mite,” this story almost immediately comes to mind. It seems to be such a simple tale, with Jesus commending a poor woman who has given a very small coin at the temple treasury because she has given a far greater sum than anyone could imagine. Her generosity, so seemingly small, has come out of her deep poverty. Jesus proclaims that she is to be emulated, and so we assume that her generosity gives us a model by which we can shape our own lives.

This is a lovely version of this story. I think we like it because it gives us permission to recognize the importance of even very small gifts that all too often affirms an ethic of scarcity over an ethic of generosity. Thinking about the story in this way is especially easy because it shows up in the lectionary every three years about this time, around the time of stewardship Sunday, in that season when the church asks us to consider how much we will give for the coming year, so we can tell ourselves that it will be okay if we can only give a small amount this year, for Jesus so greatly honored this poor widow’s small gift.

But reading the story in this way is an exercise in self-deception. None of this matches up very well with the story of this widow when we put it in its context. Before Jesus pointed out this poor widow giving her penny in the temple, he had been engaging with several scribes, answering their strange questions and addressing their challenges to him and his authority. After he had finished with them, Jesus offered his warning about the scribes that opens our reading for today. He is rightfully frustrated at their self-righteousness, for they manage to set aside real concern for those in need and instead place themselves at the center of everything. In their careful attention to the minute details of the law, they have missed its larger point of bringing care and comfort to the poor and needy. They seek out respect and honor at the expense of others and do everything for the sake of appearance. Ultimately, they use and abuse the gifts of God intended to be shared broadly, even “devouring widows’ houses” rather than glorifying God in their care for others. Only after noting all this does Jesus turn to the widow he sees at the temple treasury. He points her out to his disciples, though he does not commend her. Instead, he simply tells them that they ought to pay attention to her gift, for she “out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”

Jesus’ words here say less about the widow and more about the religious elite of his time. When we focus on the widow and her gift, we miss the challenge that he offers to our own ways of being. First of all, Jesus notes that the widow’s gift is the very thing enabling the scribes to continue with their troubling actions. The scribes “devour widows’ houses” just as one widow “puts in everything she had.” The religious establishment that Jesus criticizes here uses the gifts of the poor once intended to support the poor to destroy them all the more. As commentator Rodger Nishioka puts it, “Together, these two sections read as a lament for and an indictment upon any religious system that results in a poor widow giving all she has so that the system’s leaders may continue to live lives of wealth and comfort.” (“Pastoral Perspective on Mark 12:38-44,” Feasting on the Word, Year B, Volume 4, p. 286)

Such behaviors and practices are not limited to the scribes of Jesus’ time. I think there are plenty of practices in the church today that would make Jesus similarly furious: giant personal expense budgets for overcompensated pastors, ostentatious displays of wealth in the ways we decorate our churches, even some direct misuse of funds. I hope and pray and believe that our own practices do not fall into these categories, but Jesus might still have some concerns about more familiar and common practices that are a little more comfortable for us. What would he say about churches insisting upon owning and maintaining expensive property that only gets used once or twice a week? What would he say about large endowments and savings accounts held for a rainy day when many of our sisters and brothers are getting drenched today? How would he respond to the rising tendency of the church to raising money like other nonprofits, focusing greater attention on large donors and allowing substantial gifts to gain greater access to the life of the community? The very necessary systems of our world that shape our life together promote oppression in unexpected, sometimes even unknowable, ways. We must live in the necessary tension of supporting the financial necessity of our ministry while not exploiting or plundering our society and our creation. Rodger Nishioka again offers us a helpful word:

Many of the scribes whom Jesus condemned also thought they were doing what was honorable, right and good. Perhaps they too were caught up in a system over which they felt they had little control. But Jesus does not condemn only those who are aware of how they benefit from systems of violence and oppression. Jesus condemns any who benefit from such systems, whether they are aware or not. Ignorance is no excuse here. (“Pastoral Perspective on Mark 12:38-44,” Feasting on the Word, Year B, Volume 4, p. 288)

So we are called to examine ourselves and our actions carefully. Where have we abused the poor and powerless, intentionally or unintentionally? How can we allocate our resources of time, talent, and money to promote the common good and especially for the protection of those in greatest need? What changes must we make to be better stewards of the gifts that God has given us so that we can not only avoid the condemnation facing those who misuse these resources but also promote the flourishing of our whole world and all who live in it? I for one am grateful that we will hear one person’s perspective on this after worship today. As we welcome Dan Turk, one of the Presbyterian mission co-workers we support in Madagascar, I pray that our eyes will be opened and our hearts set afire within us to join him and his wife Elizabeth in greater and deeper support of God’s transformation in this corner of our world.

Amid the condemnation Jesus offers these scribes, he offers us all a challenge. Jesus calls us to transform the self-righteousness that so easily infects our institutions and our lives into God’s righteousness. He calls us to listen to the cry of the poor, the oppressed, the marginalized, the hungry, the refugee, the undocumented immigrant, the stranger in our midst. He calls us to recognize the places where we are complicit in oppression and to step in and act where we can to respond. And he calls us to work each and every day for things to be different—and to challenge our world to join us in that work, too.

So may God strengthen us for these challenges ahead—for the difficult examination of our faith and practice that he calls us to do and for the deep giving of our whole selves that we offer in response as we seek to join in God’s transformation of our world through Jesus Christ our Lord even as we wait for him to come to make all things new. Lord, come quickly! Alleluia! Amen.

A New Way to Live Together

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a sermon on Mark 10:35-45
preached on October 18, 2015, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

It had been a long journey, but Jerusalem was finally in sight. Jesus and the disciples had wandered all around Galilee and even a little beyond, but now their destination was this great city that had not yet heard for itself the message that Jesus had come to share. On the way there, Jesus made it clear to them—again—what he was up to:

See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death; then they will hand him over to the Gentiles; they will mock him, and spit upon him, and flog him, and kill him; and after three days he will rise again.

Everyone who followed him was amazed—and afraid. They had not signed up for this, after all—they had followed Jesus because he brought a fresh word to their stale world, not to witness an execution.

So it was no surprise that James and John came to Jesus with a strange request as they continued along the way after he had announced this difficult news to them yet again. They knew that their request was so unlikely to be granted that they asked for Jesus to say yes before they even said what it was, but they asked for it anyway! Even though he refused to grant their wish before hearing it, they did finally tell him what they had in mind: “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your life, in your glory.”

James and John were reasonably afraid about all that would be ahead for them, and they were just looking for some comfort. After all, they had given three years of their lives to following this strange teacher around Galilee, setting aside their lives as fishermen and walking away from their families as they responded to Jesus’ strange call. They were afraid that they might have nothing more to show for all this than the responsibility of joining the procession of mourners at his funeral—or of finding themselves dead, too.

Jesus, though, was a bit concerned about James’ and John’s request. He wasn’t quite sure that they understood everything that this glorified position at his right and at his left would entail. He never criticized James and John for asking, but he was quite direct with them:

You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?

Somewhat amazingly, James and John said that they could do this, but Jesus still had another surprise for them in his response. While he promised that they would share the gift and challenge of sharing his cup and his baptism, that they would find some comfort from their fears as they joined him in some of what was ahead, Jesus made it clear that the status and honor that James and John desired were not things that he could offer them—“to sit at my right hand or at my left… is for those for whom it has been prepared.” Jesus could not offer comfort and hope through the promise of something better for the days ahead—instead, he could simply point them to the gift of walking with him at every step of the journey ahead. Of course, he may have also been a bit concerned about what the other disciples might have said had he agreed to James’ and John’s request, for they were not happy when they heard about it, either!

So Jesus addressed the situation head on with all of them. Status and power—and even the comforts of a future day and age—were not his point. He had not come to face up to the powers of sin and death so that just two of the people who had tagged along for his journey might keep pestering him from his right and his left for all eternity. He was not going to live the life he lived so that a few people could enjoy the benefits of power and privilege. He was not in this game to save a few people along the way but to transform the life of the whole world. While the rest of the world might be fixated on power and privilege and prestige, Jesus made it clear that his world was not:

Whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.

The fear and uncertainty that they were feeling were not going to be resolved if they just had enough power to overcome it all—instead, Jesus made it clear that they had to approach the things ahead with a new and different perspective, to live together in new and different ways even as they faced the difficult realities of fear and uncertainty ahead.

Over the last 144 years of life together at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone, this congregation has explored many of these new and different ways. We have seen joyous possibilities and great rejoicing, and we have known the kind of fear and uncertainty that marked those days for James and John. In those early years, when we might look out the windows of this sanctuary and see cattle and farmland around us, we found a way to be servants in this community. In those years when these walls were bursting with children and adults, we found a way to be servants in this community. And in these more recent years when more than once we have looked around with uncertainty about what is ahead, we have found a way to be servants in this community.

So as we celebrate the 144th anniversary of the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone today, as we look back on what we once knew and wonder what our status and privilege will be in the days ahead, as we look around us at the challenges of finances, people, and resources, as we are tempted to look ahead of us with uncertainty and fear, Jesus challenges us to think differently about how we will live together in the days ahead. Our life together as the faithful people of God is not dependent upon regaining the size and stature we may have once known as a congregation. Our hope for the days ahead does not become real if only we can find a way to ignore our fears and uncertainties. Our way forward does not become real if we protect ourselves at the expense of others.

Instead, just as Jesus called James and John to explore a different path, we too are called to set aside our fears, our uncertainties, even our intent upon self-protection as we step out into the world in faithful service. This faithful service moves us into a different way of living together, for in service we come together as God’s people to love and serve in God’s world, setting aside any status that we might seek for ourselves as individuals or our church as a community as we seek instead to follow in Christ’s footsteps. We take a step in this direction as we shift our worship next Sunday to Bowne Park, gathering not to sing praise to God but to invite our community to action, sharing our time together with our community so that we all might work to “orange our neighborhood” and raise awareness of and bring an end to violence against women and girls. Our success in this venture will likely go unmeasured by the world’s standards, but we can trust that this act of service to our community will stand strong alongside so many others offered by our sisters and brothers in this place over the last 144 years to continue the transformation of our community and our world begun in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

After all, Jesus promises that even the challenges we might encounter along the way can strengthen us for this journey. The cup that he drank and the baptism that he was baptized with are not just stumbling blocks to glory but the gift of the sacraments that we share in this place that send us out to love and serve in the world. We share the cup of blessing that Jesus himself offers us in this place when we offer ourselves in service to others, and we know the baptism of new life that Jesus himself experienced when we share that call to new life with others. As we experience and share this cup and this baptism, we encounter the presence of the risen Christ among us and are given strength and hope for new and different life in the days ahead.

So amid this celebration of anniversaries that we share here today, may our eyes, ears, and hearts be opened to God’s call to serve in and beyond this congregation as we seek a new way of life together in this place and model that life for our weary world, waiting, watching, and working for all things to be made new in Jesus Christ our Lord. Lord, come quickly! Alleluia! Amen.

A Tale of Two Feasts

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a sermon on Isaiah 25:6-10a and Mark 8:1-10
preached on October 4, 2015, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” Charles Dickens was not the first to show off how perspectives of the world could change radically based on where you started looking, for even the prophet Isaiah knew how to paint a picture of radically different worlds. Our beautiful reading today, for example, with its exalted and joyful view of the future comes only a chapter after Isaiah proclaimed judgment upon the people of Israel:

Now the Lord is about to lay waste the earth and make it desolate,
and he will twist its surface and scatter its inhabitants.

This image of the worst of times is quickly replaced, though, with a vision of something new, a very clear word of hope for something different ahead.

On this mountain,
the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples
a feast of rich food,
a feast of well-aged wines,
of rich food filled with marrow,
of well-aged wines strained clear.

The wonder and power of God will transform the desolation of destruction and exile into the wonder of new life. This feast on this mountain will be only the beginning of the transformation happening there, for this is the place where God will destroy “the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations,” and “swallow up death forever.” Mourning and sorrow and crying will find no home on this mountain, for “then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces and take away the disgrace of all people.” This mountain, then, will be the place where rejoicing begins, where the wonder of God’s justice will become real, where the promise of God’s peace takes hold. After many years of waiting, the people will rejoice, for God’s salvation will have come, and “the hand of the Lord will rest on this mountain.”

Isaiah’s words are filled with such incredible promise and hope for a world that needs to change, but these words of hope are rightfully tempered by the broader context of the prophet’s message—and the deep pain and sorrow that keeps emerging in our world. Even when we want to call forth rejoicing, we do not have to look far to see how violence and bloodshed tear our world apart. World powers step in to longstanding conflicts claiming that they are bringing peace, only to find that they have come to target places where they can drive people even further apart. Women, men, and children are displaced from their homes and lives in so many places by violence, forced to live in difficult and challenging conditions for months and years as they await a new home. Week after week, we hear reports of more and more mass shootings, as people who want to do others harm find easy ways to access guns and weapons and open fire on students, teachers, and others, and the rest of us wonder if our school, our workplace, our home may be next even as we become numb to the practices of our culture that allow these nightmares to continue to become reality. We can barely even begin to imagine for tomorrow a mountain like what Isaiah describes where peace and hope reign supreme, where a feast of rich food will overshadow the darkness of death, where tears and mourning will be a thing of the past, where God can and will make all things new.

But this is only the tale of one feast—a promised feast, a grand meal that still lies ahead, a dream of something more that has not yet been realized. Our reading from Mark this morning tells us of another incredible feast, a feast where the promises of something new became very real, a feast that has already made our world a different place.

By this point in his ministry, Jesus had become known for making things different for the people here and now. He offered words of power in his preaching and teaching, suggesting that a different way of life was taking hold in the here and now. He touched people with healing and hope, transforming lives that had been lived in shadows and uncertainty through the simple touch of his love for everyone. And he brought together fishermen, tax collectors, and others who would have never imagined that they would matter, telling them that they could be a part of all the things that God was doing to make the world a different and better place. At every step of the way, Jesus made it clear that making things different was not a matter for another day and age—he was the kind of person who made things change now.

When he looked out over the crowd who had followed him for three days, listening and learning from his words and actions, he realized that needed something to eat. He could have left himself only to worry about their spiritual well-being, but their physical needs were pretty important to him, too. He was faced with a no-win situation: if he had sent them home to eat, they would have just fainted along the way; and if he had suggested that they just stick around a little longer, they would have kept on being “hungry,” that strange and difficult combination of hunger and anger that is so very difficult to break! To top it all off, the options for feeding this crowd were limited: they had nothing to eat, there was no store nearby, and they couldn’t even call in a food truck or catering service to make a meal for everyone!

Still, Jesus insisted that he and the disciples could feed this crowd of four thousand people. He gathered the seven loaves of bread that the disciples had, instructed the crowd to sit down on the ground, gave thanks for the meal, and distributed the seven loaves to everyone there. As they shared the meal, they discovered a few small fish and distributed these to the crowd, too. By the miraculous power of God, this meal was enough to satisfy everyone. The four thousand people who shared this simple feast found themselves on a mountain much like Isaiah had promised, with a meal perhaps lacking in well-aged wines and marrow but filled with the wonder of an impromptu banquet. The cleanup from this feast was even of note—while they had started with practically nothing, the disciples picked up seven baskets full of leftovers! When it was all over, Jesus sent the crowd on its way as he and the disciples set out for another region, but they left this incredible feast forever changed by what they had shared.

The tales of these two feasts told on this World Communion Sunday can give us insight into how we approach the work of living in faithfulness and peace around our world. When we are tempted to live our lives of faith focused on transforming the present, Isaiah opens our eyes to a holy mountain yet to come with a feast of rich food and the full wonder of new life. And when we fall into the trap of focusing only on the new life that is yet to come, Jesus reminds us that we can and should and must do something about the hungers of this world, too. This tale of two feasts is the story of our lives of faith, lives lived in-between little glimpses of new life today and the fullness of the new creation to come, words and actions that bear the wonder of how God has already transformed our world in Jesus Christ even as that transformation is not yet complete.

So today as we gather at this table, remembering more than usual the millions, even billions, who gather at similar tables all around the world on days like today, we remember especially these two feasts even as we think of so many others: the meal Jesus shared with his disciples the night of his arrest, a gathering at table on the evening of the resurrection where the disciples’ eyes were opened and they recognized Jesus in the breaking of the bread, ordinary weeknight meals shared with friends and family where we have been surprised by the presence of God in our midst, incredible dinners with luscious spreads of grand fare that leave us giving thanks to God for the wonderful creation of food and the people who prepare it, even simple, uncomplicated meals that manage to give us more sustenance than we could ever imagine.

As we share this feast today, may we remember all these feasts so that we might join in God’s work of bringing hope and food and new life to our world today, tomorrow, and every day as we wait, watch, and work for the new creation to be made real among us until we join that feast of new life on God’s holy mountain. Lord, come quickly! Alleluia! Amen.

The Tweets of Jesus

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a sermon on Mark 9:38-50
preached on September 27, 2015, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

As some of you know, I’m a bit of an active Twitterer. I’ve been using this social networking site since 2008 or so, first to connect with some friends in church work, later expanding my network to include others who share similar interests in technology and faith concerns, and most recently starting to follow some new people who share my support of the New York Red Bulls!

It takes a bit of a special person to enjoy Twitter. While Facebook can be a great way to share pictures, experiences, insights, and websites with family and friends, Twitter is a bit more intense. You can choose who to follow—whose messages will show up when you go to the site—and generally those people don’t have to approve of you following them. Messages, known as tweets, can be no longer than 140 characters, and if you include a link or a picture, the message must be shorter still. Most messages end up being pretty pithy and occasionally witty—after all, if you only have 140 characters, you have to make each one count! But even though these messages are shorter, they come more frequently. I follow about 450 people, which is a pretty manageable number, but during busy news times, those 450 people can produce ten or twenty tweets per minute!

When I looked at our reading from the gospel of Mark this morning, I felt like I was following Jesus on Twitter. This text offers us a series of short, somewhat pithy messages that can sometimes make more sense on their own than together—and if you count it up, almost all of these are 140 characters or less! But unlike many Twitterers of our time, Jesus clearly knew that context matters. He was not speaking in little random tidbits of 140 characters that were disconnected from anything else he has ever said. Instead, he was responding to questions raised by the disciples, offering insights out of an encounter with a little child whom he had welcomed into their midst because they had become so focused on questions of status and privilege that they missed the real point of what he was up to.

So in these thirteen verses, we see a series of Twitter-ready sayings that give us a pretty thoughtful look at his approach to the world. These sayings can be reasonably divided into three sets. The first was a direct response to his disciple John, who expressed what seemed to be a broader concern among the disciples that there were people using Jesus’ name to cast out demons without subjecting themselves to his authority like they had done. John’s concern sounds a lot like a modern-day copyright or intellectual property claim: “Jesus, people might get the wrong idea about your brand if these folks do the wrong thing in the wrong way in your name.”

The disciples were ready to pounce on these message thieves to get them in line, but Jesus would have nothing of it. First of all, he was glad that they were using his name and carrying his message. The ministry of healing and transformation that they identified in those days as “casting out demons” made a real difference in many lives, and he seemed to welcome the chance for more people to be touched by the power of God in this way. Jesus was not worried about diluting his brand or getting things confused—he was just excited that people were interested in the work he was doing. So “don’t stop him,” Jesus said. “No one can use my name to do something good and powerful, and in the next breath cut me down. If he’s not an enemy, he’s an ally.” It mattered more to Jesus that good things were happening than that he got full and proper credit for them.

The second set of Jesus’ tweet-like sayings shifts gears a bit. As his disciples tried to limit access to him and his message, Jesus offered some pretty outrageous responses. Those who put stumbling blocks in the way of people who wanted to follow Jesus ought to tie those blocks to themselves and go for a swim in the sea. Those who let a hand or foot help them stumble or an eye to guide them in going astray would be better off to cut it off than to face the other consequences! This was a strong continuation of his previous sayings. Jesus wanted no part of anything his followers would do that would get in the way of welcoming others to hear and share his message. No boundary should be erected to keep people out of the sort of life that he could bring them. No one ought to stand in the way of building up the community of faith. None of our actions should keep others from finding the pathway to faithfulness. As one commentator put it well,

We need to ponder the risks for us if our failures of love, our distortions of the way of Christ, our too narrow understandings of the truth, our quickness to pronounce judgment cause others to stumble as they are trying to find the way of faithful living. (Harry B. Adams, “Pastoral Perspective on Mark 9:39-50,” Feasting on the Word, Year B, Volume 4, p. 120.)

Jesus closed his very tweetable words to his disciples with a third section, a strange coda about being “salted with fire” even as he instructed the disciples to “have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.” I for one am not quite sure what it means to be “salted with fire” or to “have salt in yourselves.” One commentator suggests that Jesus was telling the disciples to get ready to be tested, that there was something ahead that would challenge them and they needed to be prepared and protected as salt does, that they need a preservative as powerful as salt to protect them from the fires ahead. Another links this reference to the great value of salt in the ancient world, suggesting that Jesus was telling the disciples that they need to recognize how precious they were to the work that was going on so that they wouldn’t get in the way of it. And two others wonder if Jesus might have been thinking that the disciples just needed to keep up their distinctiveness, to find a way to bring a new and deeper flavor to the world as they shared Jesus’ message in the days beyond his own time.

I suspect that no one of these interpretations is right on its own, for each of them gives us a helpful angle on understanding how we can be more faithful as we bear the presence of Jesus into our world. Whatever he might have meant about salt here, Jesus concluded with yet another great tweetable line: “Be at peace with one another.” He knew that the temptation would be great to be divided from each other and set ourselves at odds with one another, so he made it clear that the real and deep and faithful witness to his healing presence would come through the way that his followers lived together.

All these very tweetable lines from Jesus may still leave us scratching our heads a bit, wondering what exactly he wants us to take with us from these words. Is he suggesting that we need to open up our community to a few more branches of the Jesus franchise? Is he saying that there are certain actions for which there may be, as it is said, “hell to pay”? Is he trying to tell us that we need to prepare ourselves for some sort of suffering? If you take any one of these tweetable moments out of the broader context, these explanations might make sense, but in the bigger picture here, I think Jesus is trying to help his disciples—and by extension us—open up the understanding of community that we apply to those who follow him.

Being a part of this community is not about showing proper deference to authority or being in the right group. It is instead about living in the way that Jesus himself did, about offering a message of healing and new life to everyone who needed it along the way. Membership in this community is not about trying to adhere to a particular strict interpretation of the way forward but rather about opening ourselves to different ways of thinking as we honor our sisters and brothers who journey with us along the way. And the marks of this community are less about who gets cast out or who manages to survive along the way and far more about helping others to experience the love of God in Jesus Christ our Lord. This community finds its meaning and definition in welcoming the stranger, staying with the sick, getting to know those who are different, and supporting those who are poor. As we do all this, we set aside our fears of being cast out or not having enough because we have been welcomed into this amazing relationship of grace, hope, and love in Jesus Christ, and we simply cannot be the same.

So as we continue on this journey of faith in community, may God guide us through the difficult moments when we are tempted to cast others out, may God help us when we think of getting in the way of those who might join us along the way, and may God support us as we seek to be at peace with one another until all things are made new in Jesus Christ our Lord. Lord, come quickly! Amen.