Mark 8:31-38 • March 1, 2015

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Brothers and sisters in Christ grace and peace to you from God our Father and our Savior Jesus the Christ. Amen.

How many of us in worship today are trying to give something up for Lent this year? Or maybe you are trying to add a new spiritual discipline to your life? Anybody. I heard someone say this week that they don’t give anything up for Lent anymore and they had a better idea for this longstanding practice. Their thought was that we should be able to decide what someone else should have to give up for Lent. We could have some sort of a secret Santa drawing in our congregation before Lent and decide for someone else what they would be giving up for Lent. I don’t know, that might be kind of fun some year.

I enjoy the wisdom of the great Yogi Berra – the hall of fame baseball player and manager, not the cartoon bear of Jellystone Park fame. Yogi once said, “If you come to a fork in the road, take it.”

We are about three months into the liturgical year of the Christian church. A year that focuses on the gospel of Mark. In case you haven’t realized by now, Mark moves quickly. And Mark 8 is a bit of a theological fork in the road. This chapter is the hinge chapter in this gospel. Not only is it the middle of the gospel in terms of verse and chapter numbers, it is also the central point theologically. In chapter eight, Jesus takes a decisive turn toward the cross. Jesus seems to know what he is doing and where he is going, or rather where he must go whether he wants to go there or not. For the disciples, this encounter with Jesus is a fork in the road. And like Yogi Berra, they simply want to take it. They want it both ways. They want to stick with Jesus and be his followers while at the same time insisting that Jesus follow them down the path that they want to take. (The above reference is inspired by the writing of Scott Hoezee in The Lenten Fork.)

As a congregation, this year in Lent we are exploring what it means to be a steward of God, a disciple of Jesus. And as we grow in our understanding of being a steward of God, a disciple of Jesus, I hope and pray that we are becoming more active in the mission that we are being called to live out each day in our life together in Christ – to go, to suffer, to die, and to be raised.

The challenge that I think we run up against, which in many ways is the same challenge that the first disciples of Jesus face directly in today’s gospel reading, is that of all the things we are called to do in our life of faith – to go, to suffer, to die, to be raised – the only thing that any of us are really interested in being part of is being raised.

Bishop N.T. Wright offers a wonderful insight on this, especially as it relates to the gospel reading before us today from Saint Mark. The Bishop writes, “Following Jesus is, more or less, Mark’s definition of what being a Christian means; and Jesus is not leading us on a pleasant afternoon hike, but on a walk into danger and risk. Or did we suppose that the kingdom of God would mean merely a few minor adjustments in our ordinary lives?” (Mark for Everyone, p. 112)
One of the shifts we are being invited into during our Wednesday worship series in Lent this year relates well to what is happening to the disciples during this exchange with Jesus. The disciples are being confronted with the reality that following Jesus is far different than they first thought it would be. It’s very similar to what we are hearing in our Lent worship series “Stewards of God’s Love: The Down, In, and Out of Being a Disciple of Jesus.” You and I, who claim to be followers of the savior Jesus in 2015, answer the question, “How much of what is mine should I give away?” in a way that looks a lot more like something of our own choosing in ways that have little to do with following Jesus.

In today’s gospel, Jesus addresses this question to the first disciples, and to you and me today, by stating, “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?” (vs. 35) The disciples think they have this all figured out and that everything is theirs and they don’t have to give any of it away. That following Jesus is easy. But Jesus invites them into an entirely new reality and relationship with God and with each other. After all, being a steward of God, a disciple of Jesus is about realizing that everything we are, ever have been, or ever will be is God’s first. And that everything we have, or ever have had, or ever will have is God’s first.

Taking up your cross and following Jesus means that everything you and I have ever known – our relationships, our career, our health, our stuff, our money, is God’s. So…the call to take up your cross and follow quickly reframes the question of how much of what I think is mine should I give away into how much of what is God’s should I keep for myself?

There’s an old saying that – “half of our problems come from wanting our own way. The other half come from getting it!”

Let me leave you with this thought. “Let’s just admit it,” says Pastor Michael Coffey. “It’s really only the hard things in this life that end up telling us who we are, what we are made of, and what really matters. It is only the struggle we work through, successfully or not, that teach us the limits and the grandeur of being human. It is only the acceptance of suffering as a necessary part of the human condition that draws us together and unites us as one in our fragile, bodily, humble reality. It is only in confronting our death and placing our lives wholly in the fatherly arms, the motherly embrace of God, that we can finally and truly live.”

Brothers and sisters in Christ, as you and I continue our journey together this week to the cross of Good Friday and the empty tomb of Easter Sunday, remember that when you come to a fork in the road of your life as a steward of God, a disciple of Jesus – take it. Take it and go. But don’t just take the easy road and go where you want to go. Go where Jesus wants you to go. And in doing that, live a life that even the darkness of death cannot destroy. Amen.

Ash Wednesday • February 18, 2015

Click here to view a video of this sermon.

I’m grateful for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s publication “Stewards of God’s Love.” It is an important resource in this sermon and worship series. Click here to view a copy of the entire document.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, grace and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ.

In case you haven’t figured it out yet, today is Ash Wednesday. On this day, you and I join millions of Christians throughout the world as the holy season of Lent begins. Ash Wednesday is a day when brothers and sisters in Christ gather in worship and receive a mark on their foreheads with ashes as these words are spoken, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you will return.” These words and a tiny amount of black ash placed on our foreheads remind us of our mortality, but that’s not all. In this sacred moment on Ash Wednesday, we are reminded of whose we are. And whose we are is something that we are invited to remember every day in our life in Christ.

I’m excited about our journey through lent this year as a community of faith at Good Shepherd. You and I will have many additional opportunities to worship together, times of conversation and community building as we share meal each week, and daily invitations to scripture study, devotion and prayer. Through all of these discipleship practices, I hope and pray that you and I will grow in our life together as stewards of God’s love. Our theme is Stewards of God’s Love: The Down, In, and Out of Being a Disciple of Jesus.

According to Clarence Stoughton, former president of Wittenberg University, “stewardship is everything we do after we say ‘I believe.’ It is the way in which we use all of the resources that God has entrusted to our care so that we can love God and our neighbor. Stewardship is about love.”

So…over the next 6 weeks, you and I will enter into a time of exploring what it means to be a steward of God, a disciple of Jesus at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Bismarck, North Dakota in 2015. And for many of us, this will require a shift in the way we think about stewardship. If you were at any of the Shepherd’s Table events last fall, you might remember this video clip.

Click here to view the video clip.

In the past, the Christian church often thought of stewardship as only about paying the bills. The shift that is taking place today and connects us to the ancient beauty of God’s work through the church is that stewardship is about loving God and my love neighbor.

Many believe that stewardship is about money, whereas the story of stewardship that we receive in scripture and the ancient practices of the God’s people since the beginning of creation [click] is that stewardship is about my whole self. [click] The question “how much of what is mine should I give away?” is really not relevant to a disciple of Jesus. Instead, the question is “how much of what is God’s should I keep for myself?” And, the escalator stopping statement “we don’t have enough” becomes a new reality that a stuck escalator is just a metal staircase. This frees us to celebrate the fact that “God has provided for us in abundance” as individuals and as a community of faith.

Throughout our Lenten worship series, we will look at three actions that take place in our life together as stewards of God, disciples of Jesus.

The first movement is Down. God first comes down to us in the beginning of creation. From the very beginning of creation, we are not the owner – God is. And as stewards, we are called to care for what has always been and will always be – God’s.

God has skillfully created us and blessed us with more than we could ever imagine. In second Corinthians, the Apostle Paul writes, “And God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that by always having enough of everything, you may share abundantly in every good work.” When we realize that all we have belongs to God and not to us, we can’t help but give it away in thanksgiving for God’s generosity. We give joyfully, graciously and sacrificially because we know that our resources are not ours to keep but are God’s to share.

And finally, we look out to see how God is calling us to love our neighbor with all that God has entrusted to our care. Stewardship transforms God’s commandment to “love our neighbors as ourselves” from a religious expression into a way of life.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, when we practice stewardship in this way we are making the sign of the cross. God makes the first vertical line DOWN; we follow by moving IN to the center and then OUT to our neighbors on either side both near and far. I hope and pray that the next six weeks of our life together will help you and I grow deeper in our understanding of the ways that stewardship is directly tied to discipleship. One simply cannot exist without the other in our life of faith.

You and I form a cross with our lives and through our faith, we are marked with the cross of Christ and sealed with the Holy Spirit forever…called to be stewards of God’s love, disciples of Jesus the Christ, claimed unconditionally as God’s children. This will be our journey over the next six weeks together. I look forward walking with you along the way.

On this Ash Wednesday, as you feel the grit of the ash rub across the smooth skin of your forehead, may remember that you are God’s. That you have been chosen by God and marked with the cross of Christ forever.

Forever.

Thanks be to God! Amen.