Mark 14:32-41 "Not My Will But Yours"

I recently realized that it has been quite some time since I have mentioned my love for comic books in one of my sermons. I’m sure this is something that you all have been quite thankful for, but it is something that I’m going to change this morning. You see, I want to talk a bit about Batman today.

Batman was created as a character in 1939. That means that next year he will be seventy years old. And in the last seventy years he has gone through a number of changes, some of them good some of them bad. My first experience of Batman was reruns of the ‘60s television series that was campy and silly, and as a child I took it very seriously. But later on, in high school, I began to read the comics that told of Batman and discovered a darker, more complex person.

Batman suffered a great tragedy as a child. His parents were killed in a random shooting, in front of his eyes. And Batman is affected by this and decides that he is going to do what he can to make sure that this doesn’t happen to anyone else. Some have said that Batman is about vengeance, trying to get even with evil. But this is just not true. Vengeance can only get you so far, and Batman has a code that the follows that shows that he isn’t just about vengeance. What Batman is about is justice. He is about justice and self-sacrifice.

But recently, in the comic books that tell the stories of Batman, the authors have lost this. They have decided that Batman dressing up and trying to make the world a better place is not a normal thing, that perhaps Batman is a little deranged. And so, they end up treating him in a more negative way.

But I want to say that justice and self-sacrifice is heroic. Deciding to give up your own happiness so that you can help others is not something that someone who is deranged will necessarily do. Putting the happiness and welfare of those around you, even strangers around you, before your own, is actually something that is worthwhile. We can learn something from Batman when we realize this.

I. Doing what Feels Good

The whole discussion I just had about Batman was there to make a point that I think we sometimes miss. The culture that we live in has changed and headed in a direction that many of us aren’t comfortable with. Now it is easy to point out one issue or topic that seems to prove this point and rail on some specific sin that we see the world around us being permissive of, but I actually believe that the problem is more insidious than just one issue or sin. I believe that there has been a radical shift in our values as a culture, and it is a shift that could lead us to a dangerous place.

The shift is this: what used to be valued was self-sacrifice. Our culture and our society used to value someone who laid down their wants or desires for the sake of others; someone who gave up on their dreams so that they could help people around them. It used to be honorable to sacrifice for those around you, your family, your children, your neighbors, your country. But this value has shifted. And now in our culture, if you sacrifice your wants or your desires for those around you, you aren’t being true to yourself. Nowadays, what is valued is doing what feels good for yourself. We don’t put it in such strong language, but basically, what our society is telling us is that your happiness is the ultimate good. We might say it in different ways: be true to yourself, follow your heart, but it basically means that we are supposed to be selfish.

This might not seem like much, but it pervades our culture and our world, and is quite dangerous. It means that we are told that we should be focused on ourselves first. It means that our first goal in life is to find happiness, and happiness sought after is always outside of our reach. And when we do this, when we focus on this we end up making decisions that hurt those around us. When we focus too much on trying to make sure that we are happy, we end up walking into sin and broken relationship. People walk away from their families because they don’t feel happy in them anymore. People enter lives of sin because it feels good, and let me tell you that many sins feel good.

Now, it might seem like the right response to this is to encourage people to seek after their own happiness as long as it doesn’t hurt the happiness of those around them. This is the compromise that many make. But this is still buying into the value that our culture around us is pushing, that happiness is the ultimate good.

II. Jesus’ Prayer

But Jesus gives us an example in today’s scripture that is quite different. It is the example of a servant; it is the example of someone who puts God’s will before their own happiness. And when we contrast it to the disciples, who are more interested in sleeping than supporting their Lord, or our own lives where we are more interested in our own happiness than anything else, we see how radical and powerful Jesus’ self-sacrifice was.

Jesus was facing a difficult time. He knew what was coming for him, and he knew how horribly difficult it would be for him. If he had bought into our belief that you’ve got to do what feels good, you’ve got to chase after your own happiness; he’d never be where he was. But he knew that there was something more important than his own happiness at stake, and so he prayed.

Jesus’ prayer here is powerful. It is powerful because it helps us to see what it is like to face difficult times. It helps us see what our priorities should be. Jesus didn’t want to go to the cross. He didn’t want to face such a horrible death. He hoped and longed for another way. He asked God to deliver him from what it was he was about to face. But he didn’t leave it there. He wanted to be delivered from it, but he put his will in God’s will. “Not my will, but thine be done.” Jesus let his requests be known to God. He told God what it was that he desired; what it was that he hoped for. But then he made it clear that he would follow God’s path for him, wherever that may lead. Jesus’ priority was not his own will. His priority, rather was to follow where God was leading him.

III. Our Purpose

Happiness was not the ultimate end that Jesus was seeking, neither his nor others. What was the ultimate end for him was following God’s will. Do we find ourselves following Jesus’ example. When we face a question, when we face a problem, when we are tempted by sin, what is it that we ask ourselves? Is this going to make me happy? Or what is God’s will?

Our society has decided that the second question is not the right question to ask. There are even churches that have as their message the idea that God’s will can be simply stated in that he wants us to be happy. And therefore you don’t need to choose between the two. But this is not what the Bible says. Sometimes seeking after your own well being, sometimes seeking after your own happiness, will send you down the wrong path. It will find you turned in on yourself and serving yourself. But if we choose to seek God’s will for our lives. If we choose to follow Jesus’ example in the garden, to tell God that it isn’t our will that counts, but his, then we will find our purpose.

That is a deep truth that Christians and the church need to be sharing with the world around us, and it is not a popular one. The truth is that our purpose in life, our goal in life, shouldn’t just be to be happy. If we seek after only happiness we will discover that we have harmed those around us and even ourselves trying to find it. And the happiness that we do find will be fleeting and never be enough for us. But if we instead seek after God’s will, we will find ourselves in places where we don’t necessarily feel happy, but we will find joy and we will find peace.

Now, it’s hard to say that Jesus found joy in what he faced in the Garden of Gethsemane, but he did find peace. When he gave his will over to his Father, he found peace and strength to go on, to face the unfaceable. And his death and resurrection did bring joy not only for him but for all who trust in him, for the whole world.

This is a difficult message to share because it doesn’t come across terribly well. “Don’t seek after happiness.” It truly goes against what our culture tells us we should seek after. But when we explain that seeking after happiness only brings fleeting happiness and seeking after God’s will brings heavenly joy, when we explain that the quest for happiness is a false quest that will send us in the wrong direction, then perhaps we realize what is truly important in this world, and in doing so we realize what it is that we are called to do. Jesus gives us the example in Gethsemane. Seek after God’s will, not our own. It may not be easy, but it is what God calls us to. Amen.

Luke 15:1-7 "Lord of the Outcasts"

How many of you grew up in a church? Not necessarily this church but a church? As you can see, that’s most of us… pretty close to all of us, actually. There are wonderful things about growing up in the faith. There are wonderful things about being surrounded by the things of God from an early age so that they become a large part of you. But there are dangers that come with it as well. One danger is that you sometimes begin to believe that the “church” things that you do are what make you a Christian, a follower of Christ. You have a part of yourself that is Christian and follows the faith because that is what your parents taught you to do. This can be dangerous because it causes us to forget that our journey of faith must be our own. We cannot believe because that’s what someone else wants us to do. We need to believe and follow because of our own relationship with God.

But that’s not really the issue that I want to talk about this morning. No, I want to talk about another danger that comes with growing up in the church and being immersed in the Christian culture. That is that we all have our own language we speak. We’ve heard the Bible stories ever since we were children and we know them so well and we know the theological terms so well that often we don’t communicate them terribly well with others, we assume they are speaking the same language we are, or sometimes we miss altogether the revolutionary nature of our faith. Because Jesus’ teachings are so familiar to us we don’t get how radical they really are.

Let me give you a couple examples of this to help you see what I’m talking about. In the church context, what do we mean when we talk about someone being saved? Think about it for a moment. We think of someone having their sins forgiven and receiving eternal life. But what does it mean to be saved in a non-church context? Something a bit different. Something a little more situational. Someone who was a slave or a captive would think of being saved as someone taking them away from their captivity. Someone in massive debt would think of being saved as being freed from their debt. Someone having a heart attack would think of CPR and medical procedures that could save them.

Here’s another one: If I said someone was a Samaritan, what would you think of them? You’d think that they were someone who helped out a stranger. You’d think that they were someone who went out of their way to do something positive for someone else. And yet this is not the original meaning of a Samaritan. In fact, it is pretty much the opposite. In Jesus’ day a Samaritan was someone to be reviled, to be avoided at all costs, to be hated. And so when a Samaritan does the right thing and is good to someone, people find this shocking. And when Jesus talks with a Samaritan woman his disciples don’t know what to do.

Jesus’ message was radical, more radical than we often give him credit for. And when we realize the context that his message was in it sometimes can have the awesome power of changing the way we see the world we are in and how we are supposed to interact with it.

I. Pharisee

Well, we’ve looked at being saved and being a Samaritan and we’ve seen how our Christian culture has influenced how we respond to those words. I want to look at two other words today even a bit more closely, two words that are found in today’s scripture. These are lost and Pharisee.

We’ll begin with Pharisee. Just like with Samaritan, we almost have a gut reaction when we hear the word Pharisee. At least I know I do. I automatically put the Pharisee in a box of being someone who isn’t good. I automatically feel negative thoughts about him. If I wanted to insult a person I might call them a Pharisee. And it’d be a pretty meaningful insult. If I called someone a Pharisee I’d be saying that they are just going through the motions. I’d be saying that they probably act like they’re better Christians than others and puff out their chests a bit too much when talking about the good things they do. I’d call someone a Pharisee that I thought was too legalistic, following the letter of the law and not getting to the meaning behind it. It would be a derogatory term.

This would be a fair understanding of Pharisee based on the gospels that we have. But I don’t think it’s a fair understanding of Pharisee at all when we look at them in the context of the world they were in. You see, the gospels, and the message of Jesus that they contain were about turning things upside down. Jesus elevates the hated Samaritans to a place of honor and he lowers the honored Pharisees to a place of scorn.

To understand what the Pharisees were about we need to see that they weren’t all haughty and lording it over the “sinners”. Rather, they were the religious people in Jesus’ day. They weren’t the bad guys, they were the good guys. They were the ones who had grown up in the church. They were the ones who didn’t drink or smoke or go with girls who did. Basically, they were us. Why is it important to spend time on this? Because I think that we spend too much time looking at the Pharisees with disdain instead of recognizing ourselves in them. Jesus didn’t dismiss the Pharisees. No, they are the ones who dismissed him. You will see that throughout his ministry he tried to connect with them and teach them and save them, but they would not listen to what he had to say because they were too busy trying to be good.

And the message in today’s scripture is the one that eventually got Jesus killed. It is the message that God doesn’t just care for the good people. Rather God cares for all people. And God is willing to put effort and energy and love and as many resources as he can into reaching out to those who the good people probably want nothing to do with.

II. Lost

Today’s scripture comes at the beginning of three parables that Jesus tells about finding lost things. First we have this one, the parable of the lost sheep. I’m not going to spend much time on the parable itself. Its message, to me, seems pretty self explanatory. A shepherd has 100 sheep and loses one of them. His response is to hunt after that one and save it. And when he does he celebrates. The second parable is much the same. A woman loses a coin and searches after it. And she eventually finds it and again celebrates. The third story is even more powerful when we see it in this context. It is often referred to as the parable of the prodigal son, but in this context it is much better to see it as the parable of the lost son. The father in the parable loses his son, and waits for him and when he returns the father rejoices and celebrates because he was found.

All of these parables talk about something being lost and then being found. Now, again, I believe that our Christian culture does us a disservice, because we have a theological understanding of what it means to be lost. We automatically think that it means to not have that relationship with Jesus yet. And we believe that God seeks after the lost and eventually some are found and we rejoice when we hear of that happening. But I wonder if we’re selling God short a bit when we allow our understanding of lost to be so narrowly defined. Perhaps being lost doesn’t only refer to “the lost” but it might refer to all of us who have lost our way at one time or another. Perhaps it may refer to those who have already found Christ but are not walking with him completely yet, or, to use the language of our church’s mission statement, they may be believers but not yet disciples. Whatever it means to be lost, though, we do realize when we look at Jesus and his ministry that Jesus is focused on the lost even more so than he is on the “good” people.

III. Outcasts

The Pharisees and the teachers of the law didn’t like the fact that Jesus was spending so much time with tax collectors and “sinners”. They talked among themselves about this. They complained about it. They eventually killed him because of it. They wanted God to be focused on them, not on the sinners. They wanted God to reward them for all the ways that they had been faithful to him throughout their lives. They had worked hard at this faith thing and now this Messiah guy was ignoring them and going out and hanging out with the undesirables, the outcasts, the losers, the failures. This didn’t seem right to them. It didn’t seem fair or just. In fact it was downright shameful. How dare someone who claims to speak for God show more interest in those horrible people than he shows in me?

I believe that this is a common refrain in our churches today? We’re the ones who have been faithful to God. We’re the ones who have lived righteously while the culture around us has gone to pot. So how about a little destruction and wrath for all those sinful people, while we can sit back and enjoy the barbeque. But that’s not the message that Jesus had and it’s not the way that he lived. Jesus reached out to the outcast. He showed love to the unlovable. Today it wouldn’t be tax collectors that Jesus was hanging out with, it’d be homosexuals. Those Goth kids that so many are scared of? Jesus would be right there with them, sharing God’s love. Jesus was about breaking down the barriers that humans are so much into building up. He was about reaching out to those we wouldn’t want anything to do with. And you know what? Jesus would want to see the same from us, his body.

Jesus didn’t despise the Pharisees. He just believed that his time was better spent with those who didn’t have a relationship with God. They were being told by the Pharisees, by the church of their day that they were too sinful to have a relationship with God. Jesus proved this wrong. Let us make sure that we aren’t giving the “sinners” around us the same message that the Pharisees gave them. Rather let us share with them the message that Jesus shared. That God loves them and wants relationship with them.

This is what Bringing my World to Christ is about. It is an opportunity for us to think of those in our lives, those who we know, who need to know Jesus. Perhaps they’re loved ones that we care about very much. Perhaps they’re people who we dismiss with nary a thought. Either way they need our prayers. Not that God will fix them or make them good, but that they can experience the power that comes from knowing Jesus; that they can be found by Christ; that Jesus can save them, not just from eternal damnation, but from the problems in this world that assail them.

So I encourage you to take time today to write down the names of those who you are willing to pray for. Write two copies, one to leave on the altar and one to take home with you. And pray for these people. Believe that God can work in their lives; that Jesus can connect with them like he did with the tax collectors. But also look for ways that you can reach out and share with them as well.

Luke 24:13-35 "The Road"

In sixth century Ireland there was a legend about a group of monks who traveled in a small boat made out of leather. These monks were led by their abbot, Brendan the Navigator. The legend of Brendan tells of a seven year voyage around the North Atlantic Ocean where Brendan and his companions possibly come to America 1000 years before Columbus. The legend has many far-fetched elements to it and is obviously being written to teach spiritual truth as much as to tell a story of something that actually happened.

One of the events during the voyage happened on Easter morning. Brendan and his companions came to a rocky shore and brought the boat ashore. They spread out to pray and observe Easter individually with the understanding that at noon they would come together and share in a feast. As they prepared the fire to start cooking the meal, the island began to move, then it began to sink. The monks, well they freaked out. They ran back to the boat as fast as they could and got in it watching the “island” swim away.

What had just happened to them, islands don’t swim, nor do they sink. They were very frightened and did not know what to make of their experience. Brendan explained to the rest of the monks what had happened, for he had had a dream the night before explaining it to him. They were not actually on an island, like they though. Really, they had landed on the back of a giant whale named Jasconius. Everything they thought they understood about the ocean, about the island they had been on, was wrong. The world was very different than what they believed it to be. And this frightened them.

What is amazing is that in the legend, each Easter the monks came back to the same whale and celebrated Easter on its back. They remembered the fear, they remembered the fact that their understanding of the world had been wrong.

Easter is a time where the world is turned on its side. We look at what seemed to be the greatest defeat in the history of God’s relationship with humanity. God sent his son to the world, to be the Messiah, and the very people who Jesus came to killed him and he hung defeated on a cross. But this horrendous defeat is actually the greatest victory… and this happens with the Resurrection. We, like the monks on the back of the whale, see that the world is not how we understood it to be. God, through the resurrection, has given us a change in perspective… Like Brendan and his companions, we are right to be a bit fearful at the majesty and wonder of God. But then we can celebrate and rejoice, for Christ has risen from the dead… and that changes the way we see everything.

I. Wrapping your mind around the Resurrection

In the scripture read this morning we are introduced to a couple of the followers of Jesus who are traveling along the road to Emmaus. They are discussing the amazing things that they have just witnessed and heard of. They are trying to wrap their minds around the things that have happened. Like the monks in the story I just told… they are in need of an explanation that re-focuses their understanding of the world around them… they are in need of an explanation that re-focuses their understanding of their religion. They had grown up reading the scriptures a certain way and understanding what it was the Messiah was about.

Was the scripture that they had been reading their whole lives wrong? No. The truth was in the scripture… it had been there from the beginning, but their worldview… the things they had been taught… the things going on in the world around them caused them to interpret scripture in a certain way. And they interpreted it wrong. What they expected from God in the world around them is not what they got. And this frightened and confused them.

It took revelation from God… it took God’s Word in the flesh for them to understand the words they knew.

So these two disciples walk and discuss and they come upon a stranger who joins them in their walk. Now we know something that they don’t, this stranger is the Word of God, himself. It is Jesus. But these two disciples, these two followers of Jesus are unable to recognize him.

The stranger asks these two what it is they are talking about, what it is that troubles them. They respond by telling the stranger about the strange things that have happened in their lives. They tell of following Jesus because they believe that he is to redeem Israel. They tell of the horror of his death and how shocking and painful it was to them. They tell of the seemingly amazing resurrection that they have heard about but not seen.

Then the revelation comes. The stranger, who they still don’t recognize, tells them how what has happened fits into the scripture and is actually the very thing that that they should have been expecting. Jesus explains to these two what it is that scripture said about the Messiah and they were amazed. They were unable to see the truth in the Scripture until God gave them inspiration.

II. Inspiriation

We like to talk about the inspired word of God, the Bible, our scripture. Yet it is possible to read the Bible without inspiration. It is possible to use the very word of God to bring harm to God’s kingdom. And this seems to happen when we forget to rely on God, and instead rely on our own understanding. I have heard people preach hate from the Bible, I have heard people preach a pseudo-love from the Bible that tells us that God loves the world so much that he is going to leave each of us the way we are without bringing change in us. Neither of these are true to the message that is really there. When people take God’s word and use it to their own ends without allowing God to be present at their reading of scripture… this is a desecration of the very thing we hold so high.

Scripture is so much more than a place to go to find a text to back up a point that we want to make. This is what was done by the religious leaders of Jesus’ day… and they ended up killing Jesus because of it.

God honored the disciples desire to know the truth. They came with questions and God gave them answers. God gave them answers that transcended their culture, their teachings and their understanding.

As the disciples on the road to Emmaus searched for the truth the Word of God appeared to them, though they did not recognize him and answered the questions that they had. If they had tried playing games with him they would not have listened. If they had argued with him, they would not have listened. If they had held onto their own pre-conceived notions… they would not have listened. Instead, they humbly listened to the Word of God, and found truth.

Today, are we willing to humbly listen to God? Are we willing to put our preconceptions at the side so that we might sit and listen to the Word? God is ready and willing to teach us and is just waiting for us to listen. And how do we do this? I’m going to quickly give you three ways and they will sound familiar: reading scripture, prayer, and Christian community.

III. Three Tools

Reading Scripture: Don’t just sit down with the Bible and turn to your favorite passage… don’t read individual verses as proof texts. Read chunks of the Bible. Read the passages in context. Before you begin reading pray that God might speak to you and honestly open yourself up that the Holy Spirit might bring God’s word to you anew and fresh. Be ready to learn something new, be ready to see something in a different way. Let God be the one to speak through scripture… not yourself.

2. Prayer: When we pray we like to talk… we like to tell God what is going on in our lives and what our needs are. This is all well and good, but most conversations I enjoy are two sided ones. Actually, one sided conversations can be quite annoying. Thankfully, I have a wife to poke me when I start dominating a conversation and remind me that if I really want to participate in a conversation I need to take a breath and let others talk. Yet when we approach God in prayer we seem to think that we are to talk and talk and talk… Instead we can take time and listen. Try praying with your Bible in front of you… After saying some prayers spend time reading scripture. Then pray some more, then read some more scripture. Try spending time in silence. Open your heart to God and let God speak to you in the silence. Yes, talk to God in prayer… but listen to God in the midst of the prayer also.

3. Christian community: When I was in college, after a very difficult time in my life, I found myself very hurt, bitter and depressed. It is Christian community that helped me the most through this. I had people to keep me honest. I had friends to help me through the depression. One friend in particular had a nasty way of continuing to point me towards God. One night I was particularly feeling bad for myself and wanted to talk about what had happened. I wanted to talk and talk and I wanted pity. He let me talk, but then he led me towards God. Our evening ended in the chapel at my college and he left me in peace before God. That was the night that the most healing happened for me, because I had a friend who directed me away from myself and towards God. That is part of what we are to be for each other. We are there for each other to encourage and to point on the right path. We are there for each other to support each other in difficult times and to celebrate with each other in the joyous times. God will speak to each of us through each other, if we are willing to listen.

The disciples on the road to Emmaus were willing to listen and heard God’s revelation, God’s word spoken directly to them. And then they recognized Jesus when he broke bread. Let us pray that as we seek him in scripture, in prayer and in Christian community, we will also recognize him as our risen Lord. Amen.