2009
Sermons
Dez 27 - The Cost of Christmas
Dez 24 - Humble-ation
Dez 24 - Present Imperfect
Dez 20 - Insignificant?
Dez 13 - The Word happened to John
Dez 6 - What’s a good introduction?
Nov 29 - Between Fear and Hope
Nov 22 - The Faithful Witness
Nov 15 - Provoke!
Nov 8 - Homo eucharisticus
Nov 1 - God with Us
Okt 25 - The Seven Marks of the Church
Okt 18 - Too Comfortable in Babylon
Okt 11 - What Kind of Love?
Okt 4 - Does God belong to us or do we belong to Him?
Sep 27 - Not Much Time
Sep 20 - Life or Death?
Sep 13 - Bearing Our Cross.
Sep 6 - Work, Holy Work
Aug 30 - Why bother?
Aug 28 - Anxiousness
Aug 23 - Whom Shall We Follow?
Aug 16 - Reason for Joy
Aug 9 - Bread
Aug 2 - Because...therefore...
Jul 26 - ...Consumer, or what?
Jul 12 - It costs!
Jul 5 - Traveling Light
Jun 28 - A Matter of Death and Life
Jun 21 - Two different questions
Jun 14 - Unlikely
Jun 7 - And it is all up to...God
Mai 31 - Communication!
Mai 24 - In, Not Of
Mai 19 - To Remember,....to Do
Mai 17 - Hard, but not burdensome
Mai 16 - Unconditional Commitments
Apr 19 - Easter in a Lenten World
Apr 12 - The End in the Middle
Apr 11 - Can these bones live?
Apr 10 - Unlikely
Apr 10 - Exodus
Apr 9 - Doing Feet
Apr 5 - At the center of the Creed
Mrz 22 - Grace to you
Mrz 15 - Good News and Thanks-Living
Mrz 12 - The Wisdom of Encouragement
Mrz 9 - Onward!
Mrz 8 - The Way of the Cross
Mrz 1 - Blessing, Sin, Judgment, and Grace
Feb 25 - Wounded Savior, Wounded People
Feb 22 - Silence and Speech
Feb 15 - Maze or Labyrinth?
Feb 8 - Let all the people pray, "Heal us, Lord."
Feb 1 - It's a wonder!
Jan 25 - Pointing to God at Work
Jan 18 - Metamorphosis
Jan 11 - God loose in the world
Jan 4 - Christmas with Easter Eyes
...Consumer, or what?
Eighth Sunday after Pentecost - July 26, 2009
John sets the stage for the Gospel today with this little comment:
a large crowd kept following him.
Why?
As we explore that simple question, we'll discover some things about the crowd and also about ourselves,
and more importantly, discover what the crowd received that day, and also what we receive yet today.
Just read the text!
We don't have to apply much detective work to come up with a list of answers to why a large crowd kept following Jesus:
1) the easy thrill.
Everyday life can seem rather dull, and Jesus is the most exciting thing happening.
There is no cost or obligation, they think.
Just come and watch for what wonderful thing that Jesus will do next.
It is a good guess that many do not ask very closely what is really going on here.
They just want to see the next trick.
Jesus is “entertainment” in its poorest sense.
Healings, feedings, storm stilling – these are all clever things...what will be next?
2) There may be some who are asking deeper questions:
Who is this Jesus?
What is he accomplishing?
Does it mean something for me?
for the world?
3) Besides the spectators and the thinkers, there are the consumers,
those who want to grab their share of whatever good stuff is happening.
--healing? Get Aunt Sarah in line.
--food? I want my portion too.
It is important to note that even though the consumers do not seem particularly thoughtful or thankful, Jesus does not chase them away.
He continues to give his good gifts, even to people who don't even try to understand!
We'll come back to this point in a bit.
4) There were those who were hungering for an authoritative word:
“Life is messy and confusing; just straighten it all out for us, Jesus.”
They might call Jesus a great prophet, in the tradition of Elijah, Elisha, or Isaiah.
5) And finally, there were those in the crowd who saw Jesus as the answer to their political problems:
“Kick out the Romans, and you be king,” they said.
Is it possible to identify all five of these attitudes around and in ourselves yet today?
1) are there spectators who merely want to be entertained?
2) are there those who are asking truly deep questions?
3) are there consumers asking “What do I get out of it?”
4) are some longing for an authoritative word in a cacophonous world?
5) are there some who would like to be done with politicians and their endless arguments and jockeying for position and power?
and say “Let's have a true theocracy!”
We've heard or expressed all of these attitudes at various times.
We notice most significantly that Jesus does not chase away those who do not have the best understanding, but neither does he cater to their whims.
As he worked with and challenged those crowds of 2,000 years ago, he also works with and challenges us.
He takes our existing level of understanding and moves it along, in a different direction.
Some refuse to be moved.
Some want to remain spectators only, or consumers only, but Jesus is not deterred.
He continues working, speaking, and doing with the serene confidence that at length the will of the Father is to be successful.
And along the way, we who so often think that we know it all, or have seen it all, or who have been grabbing all that we wanted,...all of us get surprised.
A spectator may be captivated by what is heard and seen in Jesus, and begin to share in the community.
A questioner may discover that Jesus provides a different context for asking the questions, centered not on ourselves but on the Lord Jesus himself.
A consumer after all the food he can grab,
may receive the Bread of life and therein discover that it is most satisfying when it is shared rather than being hoarded.
One longing for authoritative pronouncements will discover that the needed words have already been spoken, and we need to pay attention to them.
One looking for a political messiah will discover that Jesus as Lord is profoundly more important than a mere politician.
Every one of those five attitudes is challenged by Jesus, and has the possibility of being transformed by Jesus.
All of us will get surprised.
Let's choose one of the five to think about just a bit more:
the attitude of consumer.
Very often in the discussion about which church one should join, the criteria will be stated or implied:
This or that particular church is “where I get my needs met.”
Is that the way we regard the Lord Jesus?
As the eternal sugar-daddy catering to our every whim and demand?
But the church is not about you and me, it is the body of Christ, first and foremost.
Furthermore, the consumerist attitude presumes that one knows what one's needs are.
Even the atheist philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche more than a century ago recognized that error:
Christianity presupposes that man does not know, cannot know what is good for him; he believes in God who alone knows it, he said.
If we took a poll around the congregation, I'm reasonably sure that we would list a bunch of consumerist attitudes.
“I need help to get through the week.”
“I need a sense of inner peace.”
“I need help making difficult decisions.”
These are typical things that we say, and the subject of each of them is “I”.
Jesus, take care of us.
Jesus, confirm us in all the things that we like to do.
Jesus, give me a pat on the back, and tell me that I'm doing the right things.
But Jesus backs away from becoming the sugar-daddy, the unquestioning affirmer of whatever we want.
When Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force and make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself. John says.
Christianity, following Jesus, is not merely another helpful means of helping us get what we want.
Rather, following Jesus is the means whereby God gets what God wants.
Therefore, it would be appropriate for a person preparing to join the congregation as well as for persons long established here, to lay aside the consumer-type attitudes.
Instead of demanding that Jesus meet whatever I think my needs are,
let's gather together here because this is a grand space in which God can be praised and thanksgivings can be made...and then wait a bit and see what God wants us to be doing because of the things for which we give thanks.
Our word worship has in its history the term worth-ship, the idea that God is worthy of praise just because God is God.
Our worship is not about us, but about God.
--We listen to his story through the lives of many persons in scripture'
--We name persons and causes in prayer, in trust that God will make of it all something good.
--We think we know what we need, and then Jesus gives us something more valuable and important than that, Himself, the Bread of Life.
This our God announces that he is identifying himself with tangible things,
including ....the flesh and blood of a real live person in Jesus of Nazareth,
...the bread and wine of the meal this day,
...with this assembly of people called church,
and names them all “Body of Christ.”
The theological word for this is Incarnation, being made flesh,
and it is a wonder to confound the most jaded spectator, thinker, consumer, truth-seeker or politician.
Yes, we are being changed today, a bit at a time, whenever we meet in Christ's name.
--watchers becoming participants in the praise of God.
--thinkers being moved to action.
--consumers becoming sharers and ones who treasure God's good gifts,
--truth-seekers being changed by the truth which they encounter here.
Whichever attitude each of us is harboring this day is due for a transformation by Jesus.
Listen for it, receive it with joy, and trust it for life.
Jesus gives us not necessarily what we want, but what we truly need.
Thanks be to God! Amen.
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Please note: The preceding sermon is provided as a resource for the thought, prayer, and meditation of the members and friends of St. Mark's. It is the residue of a verbal event, and thus it does not have academic footnotes and other details that would be expected in a written document. The writer gladly acknowledges the prior thought and work of many Christians before him. |