SERMON - 2009 CONFERENCE ON MINISTRY

Bishop Edward R. Benoway

While we can choose our Spouse, and we can choose our Friends, we don’t get to choose our siblings, our brothers and sisters.  We get them by virtue of the family we are born into!  As kids, we might cut to the chase and declare: “We’re stuck with them!”

A Pastor invited letters from the children of the parish.  On young boy wrote:  “I can’t wait to get to heaven, Pastor, because I KNOW my brother won’t be there!”  Nine-year-old Amy wrote:  “Dear Pastor, are there real devils on earth?  I think my brother is one!”  “Dear Pastor,” writes 8-year-old Arnold, “I know God is supposed to love everybody, but I don’t think He ever met my sister!”  Family relationships can be tough perhaps especially among sisters & brothers because, for better or worse, we are related to one another by birth, and live in the same house!

The same thing can be said about the family of God!  In the waters of baptism, we are reborn the children of God and inheritors of eternal life.  With water and the Word, we are made sisters and brothers in Christ Jesus, members of the family of God that we call the Church!

The task of embracing this family, with all its complexities, is a challenge.  In the waters of baptism, God reaches down & hugs the world unto God’s self.  God in Christ Jesus enters into this Holy Relationship with each one of us, and this holy relationship unites us, binds us, to one another as sisters and brothers.

In our Gospel reading, Jesus speaks to his disciples for a second time about the cross; about going up to Jerusalem to be delivered up to the authorities, to suffer betrayal by His friends, to be mocked and insulted, beaten and abused, and to be crucified upon a cross!  All this, for the sake of the world, that God so loves!  The disciples hear Him, but apparently, don’t understand, and decide not to press it.  For it reality, it isn’t Jesus about whom they are really concerned, at least not at this moment.  It isn’t the Lord’s mission about which they are excited or concerned.  Instead they are concerned about themselves and their “positions.”  They debate, or more accurately they argue, about who is the greatest among them.

How so like brothers and sisters!  Not likely to appreciate the gifts and blessings that each bring to the family, but rather, they argue about who’s the best or who’s the greatest.  “Jesus likes me the best!!”   Does not!   Does to!  What a strange discussion for the disciples to be having.  For according to Mark, Jesus has just spoken to them about denying themselves, and following his own example of servanthood.

So, Jesus takes a little child into his arms and places the little one in the midst of the disciples. “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name, welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me, welcomes not me, but the One who has sent me!”  Perhaps there in Capernaum, in the house, in the presence of the loving gaze of Jesus, and that little child, the disciples begin to gain a little perspective.

Yet, the first words out of the disciples mouths, was from John, “By the way, Lord, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him because he was not following us!”

“Don’t stop him,” says Jesus, “he’s on our side!  If you put a stumbling block in the way of one of these little ones, who believe in me, it is not a good thing!”  I am paraphrasing here… Jesus actually gets a little graphic about the millstone around the neck, and cutting off the hand that offends, or the foot that causes stumbling, or plucking out the eye that causes stumbling!

The disciples are attempting to limit the power and the presence of God to their own, very small, very human, ways of understanding.  This person, who was casting out demons in Jesus’ name, was an outsider, not a member of their group.

Christ is leading them to embrace the world; the disciples are having trouble embracing the brother, also doing ministry in the name of Jesus!  Christ is including all people in the realm of His healing power; they are excluding some from using that same healing power for the sake of the world.

You and I make the same mistake of privatizing the Gospel, whenever we believe that somehow, God has given us the exclusive, right-understanding, of his word;  that we alone have the proper way to worship; or that, God has revealed God’s will more perfectly to us, than to our other brothers and sisters in Christ.  Has NOT!  Has to!  Within the family of God, as in our own families, there is often blindness among the siblings to the grace and power of God working in mysterious and mighty ways, in and through our sisters and brothers!  “Pastor, are their devils on earth, I think my sister’s one!”  Brothers & sisters in Christ, our relationship with each other is so significant, so vitally important and so holy, that it demands the very best of us!  It demands that we show respect and honor.

I was able to worship this past Sunday with my family and I was sitting there listening to reading of the Scripture.  I was struck by the words of the second lesson from James:  “Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers and sisters, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.  The tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great exploits; it can stain the whole body!”

You and I have been called to serve in this part of the family of God that we call the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.  By virtue of our calls, as pastors, servant ministers, musicians, rostered leaders and lay congregational leaders, we are given the awesome privilege and responsibility of leading and teaching the people of God, the little ones, entrusted to our care and shepherding.

St. Paul reminds us:  “Think of us in this way, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God.  Moreover, it is required of stewards that they be found trustworthy.”

As your bishop, I am humbled by the incredible wisdom, insights and theological and biblical astuteness of the folks who shared in the conversations and decisions of our church.  I have read commentary, exposition and position papers by some of the finest Lutheran teaching theologians and biblical Scholars of our church, many of them on the faculties of our seminaries and institutions of higher education, sharing thought-provoking perspectives.

I have been privileged to hear and participate in conversations with some of the most talented leaders of this church and this synod as you shared your visions and understandings of where God is leading this church.  I have been humbled and immensely blessed by the personal testimony and witness of some of the finest individuals, members of our congregations, sharing how they sense the Spirit of God is touching their lives and leading them in their daily ministries.

Time and time again, I have felt that I was sitting at the feet of Jesus, hearing his words and his directions for the Church flow from the lips and words of all these sisters and brothers in Christ.  However, like sisters and brothers in our earthly families, like those of us in the room, they do not agree on all things about our studies, our decisions, our actions.  That does not surprise or bother me about our church family.  I don’t expect that of those who have been sprinkled with the same waters of baptism!  God has gifted us differently.  God has called us to various ministries.  The Spirit blows where it wills, and leads us down our many ministry pathways.  We’re the richer for it.

But I am troubled by some things I am witnessing within our church family.  I have been deeply offended by the untruthful allegations and unkind remarks by some about brothers and sisters, who hold differing

views or understandings.  Scandalous comments implying that those among us who differ are fearful bigots, hopeless legalists, or ultra-conservative biblical literalists; OR, declaring that those different from themselves are rejecting the Bible’s authority, turning their backs on the confessions, or closing their hearts to God’s Spirit.  It troubles me that at a time when we are called to lead, we might instead be responsible for placing stumbling blocks in the pathways of others, particularly those we are called to serve.

A group of children of various abilities and disabilities were gathered together in a Sunday school-like setting.  One of the children suggested playing the finger-play activity:  “Here’s the church; here’s the steeple; open the door, and see all the people.”  Immediately, the children began putting their hands together and repeating the familiar rhyme.  But one of the children realized that her friend, sitting across the table from her, had only one hand.  With hardly a hesitation, the girl scooted her chair closer to her friend and offered one of her hands, saying to him:  “Here, let’s make a church together!”

Let’s make a Church together!  This is the compelling call of Christ’s Gospel message:  To embrace one another and the world in its brokenness, even as we ourselves have been embraced, in our brokenness, by Christ.  The good news of the Gospel is that Christ died upon the cross so that He might unite us in a Holy Relationship with himself, and with our brothers and sisters in Christ.  Jesus heals us.  Jesus makes us whole.  Jesus restores our relationships.  He helps us build church together.

As Christ gathers us around his table of grace and we share here in His Holy Supper, this bread and the wine, his body and his blood reconciles us unto God and one another.  In worship, in the Word and Sacraments, in the community of the faithful, we hear the voice of Jesus gathering us in, calling us to repentance, announcing God’s love for us and all humanity, and inviting us to follow Him into the world to share this love with others.

It is here that we, as Lutherans, celebrate the Real Presence of Christ Jesus in our midst!  It is here that we are embraced fully and completely by God in spite of our differences, and uncertainties, and our concerns about our work in the Kingdom.  It is here that we are welcomed as a little child, ourselves, and folded into the arms of Christ Jesus, our Lord.

Amen.