Kristen Bargeron - Sermon Untitled (July 16, 2000)
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| - | I bring you greetings this morning | 0:10 |
| in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, | 0:11 | |
| from your brothers and sisters at | 0:14 | |
| Pinnacle United Methodist Church | 0:16 | |
| and Mount Zion United Methodist Church, | 0:18 | |
| some of whom are here worshiping with us this morning. | 0:21 | |
| So this morning, we have the story | 0:26 | |
| of a powerful political leader | 0:29 | |
| who lacks discipline, | 0:31 | |
| gets in trouble with women, | 0:34 | |
| makes extravagant promises and then trades in his ideals | 0:35 | |
| in order to save his image. | 0:39 | |
| These Bible times, they're so strange and foreign to us, | 0:42 | |
| how could we ever hope to understand them? | 0:46 | |
| (congregation laughs) | 0:49 | |
| No, I guess I wouldn't blame you if you're wondering | 0:51 | |
| why in the world we have substituted | 0:54 | |
| an excerpt from Newsweek | 0:56 | |
| for the Gospel reading this morning. | 0:57 | |
| This is a very strange story. | 1:00 | |
| Not strange because it's unfamiliar, | 1:04 | |
| it's unfortunately all too familiar, | 1:07 | |
| but it's an awfully strange story to find | 1:10 | |
| smack in the middle of the Gospel of Mark | 1:12 | |
| not only because of all of the colorful details | 1:15 | |
| about Herod's dysfunctional family life, | 1:18 | |
| but primarily because the story just doesn't | 1:22 | |
| seem to have anything to do with Jesus. | 1:24 | |
| In fact, it's the only story in Mark's Gospel | 1:27 | |
| that isn't specifically about Jesus. | 1:30 | |
| And to make matters even stranger, | 1:34 | |
| this story about John the Baptist | 1:37 | |
| kind of cut and pasted right into the middle | 1:38 | |
| of another story, | 1:41 | |
| into last week's Gospel lesson about Jesus | 1:43 | |
| sending out the disciples two-by-two. | 1:47 | |
| Jesus commissions the disciples, | 1:50 | |
| then we cut to the beheading of John the Baptist, | 1:52 | |
| and then out of nowhere, | 1:55 | |
| here come the disciples again back from their mission. | 1:56 | |
| Now, of all the Gospel writers, | 2:00 | |
| Mark is the one who is least likely | 2:03 | |
| to provide any kind of extra detail. | 2:05 | |
| And he certainly wouldn't be likely | 2:08 | |
| to just throw in a whole story | 2:10 | |
| because he thought it was interesting | 2:12 | |
| and it would take up some space. | 2:13 | |
| He must have had some kind of purpose | 2:16 | |
| for us hearing this very detailed story | 2:19 | |
| about the murder of John the Baptist. | 2:22 | |
| Unfortunately preachers 2,000 years later | 2:26 | |
| still have to figure out exactly what that purpose was. | 2:28 | |
| Well I once heard that you should | 2:32 | |
| interpret scripture by the same criteria | 2:34 | |
| that you use to choose real estate, | 2:36 | |
| location, location, location. | 2:39 | |
| So perhaps the rather odd location of this story, | 2:42 | |
| sandwiched right in the middle of another story, | 2:46 | |
| is actually a clue to us for its meaning for us today. | 2:49 | |
| After all, as we saw in last week's Gospel lesson, | 2:55 | |
| Jesus prepares the disciples to share in his ministry | 2:59 | |
| primarily by teaching them how to handle rejection | 3:03 | |
| from the villages where they were to travel. | 3:06 | |
| Apparently Jesus knew that a message of repentance | 3:10 | |
| and self-denial might not gain mass, popular appeal. | 3:13 | |
| And now, with the story of John the Baptist, | 3:18 | |
| Mark has extended that rejection, even into | 3:20 | |
| the courts of power. | 3:24 | |
| And he foreshadows for us how Jesus | 3:26 | |
| and his disciples will also be rejected | 3:28 | |
| by those in political control. | 3:31 | |
| For if the common folk of the villages would resent | 3:35 | |
| being told to change their ways, | 3:38 | |
| how much more would the folks at the top | 3:40 | |
| reject such a message? | 3:42 | |
| I mean, people like Herod and Herodias | 3:45 | |
| weren't used to being questioned, | 3:47 | |
| and certainly not by someone as rough around the edges | 3:48 | |
| as John the Baptist. | 3:51 | |
| (congregation laughs) | 3:53 | |
| If the common folk could kick you out of their village | 3:54 | |
| when they got tired of listening to you, | 3:57 | |
| well Herod had the power to shut you up for good. | 4:00 | |
| So maybe this story isn't as out of place as it first seems. | 4:04 | |
| Mark seems to be telling us | 4:09 | |
| if you want to know what it looks like | 4:11 | |
| to be a disciple of Jesus Christ, | 4:13 | |
| well take a look at this. | 4:15 | |
| Not only does being a disciple mean speaking the truth | 4:18 | |
| to people who mostly don't want to hear it, | 4:20 | |
| not only does it mean leaving behind any kind of status | 4:24 | |
| any kind of security, | 4:27 | |
| any claims to privilege or power, | 4:29 | |
| it also means marching right into the places of power | 4:33 | |
| and telling it like it is. | 4:37 | |
| It means risking everything. | 4:40 | |
| Your place in society, your comfort, | 4:44 | |
| your job. | 4:47 | |
| And if it comes to it, even your life. | 4:49 | |
| Just as he has from the beginning of Mark's Gospel, | 4:53 | |
| John the Baptist points to the way of Jesus. | 4:56 | |
| Just as John was killed for speaking | 5:00 | |
| the truth to power, | 5:02 | |
| so will Jesus be executed | 5:04 | |
| by powerful people who want to keep him quiet. | 5:06 | |
| And according to Mark, | 5:10 | |
| anyone who follows Jesus must be prepared to do so | 5:11 | |
| even at great cost, | 5:16 | |
| even if it means following him all the way to the cross. | 5:18 | |
| Now, if being a disciple of Jesus Christ | 5:24 | |
| is starting to sound like a little more | 5:26 | |
| than you thought you had signed up for, | 5:27 | |
| you will be glad to know that there is another option. | 5:30 | |
| (congregation laughs) | 5:33 | |
| You don't have to be a disciple. | 5:34 | |
| You can think the world of Jesus | 5:37 | |
| and not change a thing in your life. | 5:39 | |
| Let me illustrate this option for you | 5:43 | |
| by telling you a story | 5:44 | |
| about a man named Clarence Jordan. | 5:47 | |
| Now Clarence Jordan really was a disciple of Jesus. | 5:50 | |
| He actually thought that following Jesus | 5:54 | |
| meant doing everything that Jesus told us to do. | 5:56 | |
| So in the early 1940s he and his wife Florence | 6:00 | |
| gave everything they had to start a place | 6:03 | |
| down in southwest Georgia called Koinonia Farm, | 6:05 | |
| a Christian community where | 6:09 | |
| they would try in every way | 6:10 | |
| to live according to the Sermon on the Mount. | 6:12 | |
| They called Koinonia a demonstration plot | 6:16 | |
| of the Kingdom of God. | 6:18 | |
| Well it turns out that seeing the Kingdom of God | 6:21 | |
| at work really ticked a lot of people off | 6:23 | |
| down in the Bible Belt. | 6:25 | |
| Especially because the folks at Koinonia thought | 6:27 | |
| that in the Kingdom of God, | 6:30 | |
| God's black children and God's white children | 6:32 | |
| would eat together | 6:35 | |
| and even worship together. | 6:36 | |
| As a result, Koinonia came under intense persecution. | 6:39 | |
| They were shot at, fire bombed, beaten up. | 6:44 | |
| And they were also the victim of a near economic, | 6:48 | |
| near total economic boycott | 6:52 | |
| by the businesses in south Georgia, | 6:54 | |
| which meant that they were unable to sell their crops | 6:56 | |
| or to buy necessities like heating oil. | 6:59 | |
| All stuff that's naturally | 7:03 | |
| just took part of being a disciple, | 7:04 | |
| at least according to the Gospel of Mark. | 7:07 | |
| But Clarence Jordan also had a brother | 7:10 | |
| whose name is Robert. | 7:12 | |
| Robert had chosen a somewhat different path. | 7:14 | |
| He was a lawyer, and he would go on to be a state senator | 7:17 | |
| and a judge on Georgia's Supreme Court. | 7:20 | |
| At the height of Koinonia's persecution, | 7:25 | |
| Clarence called his brother Bob up | 7:27 | |
| to ask him to represent Koinonia legally. | 7:29 | |
| And this is how their conversation went, | 7:32 | |
| according to the folks down in Koinonia. | 7:35 | |
| Bob said, | 7:36 | |
| Clarence, I can't do that. | 7:38 | |
| You know my political aspirations. | 7:41 | |
| Why, if I represented you I might lose my job, | 7:43 | |
| my house, everything I've got. | 7:46 | |
| Well, we might lose everything too, Bob. | 7:49 | |
| Well, it's different for you. | 7:53 | |
| Why is it different? I remember, it seems to me that | 7:56 | |
| you and I joined the church on the same Sunday as boys. | 8:01 | |
| I expect that when we came forward, | 8:04 | |
| the preacher asked me about the same questions | 8:06 | |
| as he asked you. | 8:08 | |
| He asked me, do you accept Jesus Christ as | 8:10 | |
| your Lord and Savior? | 8:15 | |
| And I said yes. | 8:18 | |
| What did you say? | 8:20 | |
| (congregation laughs) | 8:22 | |
| I followed Jesus, Clarence, up to a point. | 8:23 | |
| Could that point, by any chance, be the cross? | 8:27 | |
| That's right, I followed him to the cross, | 8:31 | |
| but not on the cross. | 8:33 | |
| I'm not gonna get myself crucified. | 8:36 | |
| Then I don't believe you're a disciple. | 8:40 | |
| You're an admirer of Jesus, but not a disciple. | 8:43 | |
| I think you oughta go back to the church you belong to | 8:47 | |
| and tell them that you've changed your mind. | 8:49 | |
| You want to be an admirer, not a disciple. | 8:52 | |
| So you see, we do have an option. | 8:57 | |
| We don't have to be disciples of Jesus, | 9:01 | |
| we can just be admirers of Jesus. | 9:04 | |
| We can listen to Jesus say, | 9:09 | |
| "Blessed are the poor, for yours is the Kingdom of God," | 9:10 | |
| and think, what a beautiful thing to say. | 9:16 | |
| That Jesus was so good. | 9:21 | |
| I sure wish I were more like Him. | 9:24 | |
| But, we're just admirers, so we can still stuff ourselves | 9:27 | |
| with all the resources of the Earth | 9:30 | |
| to fill our insatiable appetites | 9:32 | |
| while men and women and children go hungry. | 9:35 | |
| We can read | 9:40 | |
| "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you." | 9:40 | |
| And say, boy do I wish that's the way the world was. | 9:46 | |
| But, we all know it's not, and I just don't think | 9:51 | |
| we have any choice but to execute criminals. | 9:53 | |
| We can write off Jesus as an idealist | 9:59 | |
| who was a super guy, but just not real practical, | 10:01 | |
| and go about our business in the real world. | 10:06 | |
| And for those of us who choose to be admirers of Jesus, | 10:11 | |
| we also have a role model in the scripture today. | 10:15 | |
| His name is Herod. | 10:19 | |
| Now most of us who grew up knowing Herod | 10:21 | |
| as the evil villain of the whole Gospel story | 10:24 | |
| probably don't relish finding ourselves in his company. | 10:26 | |
| But the truth is that, | 10:30 | |
| Mark's portrait of Herod is relatively sympathetic. | 10:31 | |
| Herod was a genuine admirer of John the Baptist, | 10:36 | |
| and we can assume also of Jesus, | 10:41 | |
| since he thought Jesus was John raised from the dead. | 10:42 | |
| Mark says that Herod really liked listening | 10:47 | |
| to all those crazy things that John used to say, | 10:49 | |
| and that he was even a little bit afraid of John, | 10:53 | |
| because he knew that John was such a good man. | 10:55 | |
| Herod even uses his power to protect John | 10:59 | |
| from his own wife, | 11:01 | |
| at least for a while. | 11:03 | |
| But when push comes to shove, | 11:06 | |
| Herod is willing to trade John's life | 11:09 | |
| in order to save face in front of the other big wigs. | 11:12 | |
| In order to protect his piece of power. | 11:15 | |
| In the end, you see, mere admirers of truth | 11:20 | |
| will cut off its head | 11:23 | |
| to keep it from messing things up too much. | 11:25 | |
| Now for those of you who are considering this | 11:30 | |
| admirer option as a possibility, | 11:32 | |
| I should inform you of a couple of downsides. | 11:33 | |
| First of all, there is the annoying habit | 11:37 | |
| that truth has of just inserting itself | 11:39 | |
| right into our lives. | 11:42 | |
| Even Herod was not able to listen to John the Baptist | 11:44 | |
| for long before he got all turned around | 11:47 | |
| and twisted up inside. | 11:49 | |
| And who wouldn't get greatly perplexed | 11:53 | |
| trying to bridge the distance | 11:56 | |
| between what you claim to believe in | 11:57 | |
| and the way that you're actually living. | 12:00 | |
| It's no way to spend a life, | 12:03 | |
| and yet that's the way that many of us do spend our lives. | 12:05 | |
| And of course, the time will eventually come, | 12:09 | |
| as it did for Herod, | 12:11 | |
| when we're forced to make a choice, | 12:13 | |
| when we can no longer straddle this gap. | 12:14 | |
| And when that time comes, | 12:19 | |
| if we're merely admirers, we'll do like Herod did. | 12:20 | |
| We'll sacrifice the one we admire | 12:25 | |
| for the things that we really love. | 12:29 | |
| After all, Jesus was crucified by people | 12:32 | |
| who had once admired him. | 12:37 | |
| But that's not even the biggest problem. | 12:41 | |
| The biggest problem is that in the words of Bob Dylan, | 12:44 | |
| "Everybody's gotta serve somebody." | 12:47 | |
| You may not be a disciple of Jesus, | 12:51 | |
| but you will be a disciple, | 12:54 | |
| or more precisely a slave to something. | 12:57 | |
| Maybe like Herod you'll be enslaved to your own | 13:01 | |
| lust for power. | 13:04 | |
| Or maybe like Robert Jordan, you'll be a slave | 13:06 | |
| to popular opinion because of your aspirations for success. | 13:09 | |
| Maybe you'll be a slave to all of your consumer choices, | 13:14 | |
| that false freedom which will consume you | 13:17 | |
| in the quest for a nicer car, or a bigger house, | 13:21 | |
| or a trendier restaurant. | 13:24 | |
| But whatever your master, | 13:28 | |
| you can be sure that it will demand every much of your life | 13:30 | |
| body and soul as Jesus does. | 13:36 | |
| The difference is that disciples of Jesus lose their lives | 13:41 | |
| in order to gain it. | 13:45 | |
| Slaves give their lives to things | 13:47 | |
| which offer only death in return. | 13:49 | |
| So if the bad news is that we've all gotta serve somebody, | 13:54 | |
| the good news is that it's a pretty easy choice. | 13:58 | |
| We can waste our lives trying to straddle the gap | 14:02 | |
| between the truth we admire and the gods that we serve, | 14:05 | |
| the gods of Herod, of Robert Jordan, | 14:09 | |
| the gods of our appetites and desires. | 14:12 | |
| Or we can give our lives, completely, | 14:17 | |
| to the One who gave us life. | 14:20 | |
| To the One who gave His life for us. | 14:23 | |
| To the One who offers eternal life. | 14:26 | |
| We can serve the God | 14:30 | |
| of Clarence Jordan and John the Baptist. | 14:31 | |
| And like them, we can live the abundant life | 14:34 | |
| of disciples of Jesus Christ. | 14:38 | |
| We don't have to be slaves, either. | 14:42 | |
| Thanks be to God. | 14:45 |