July 3, 2012

“If I But…Do Not Touch!” 07.01.2012 Sermon

By Bishop Craig Schweitzer

Mark 5:21-43 • July 1, 2012

Click here to hear an audio recording of this sermon.

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

I hope you were paying attention to our gospel reading. Did you catch that there were two stories wrapped around each other in today’s text. This is a pretty common practice used by the writer of Mark’s gospel. A story within a story of sorts and although they are individually unique stories, together they tell one story. The two stories that we hear are amazing stories of healing, one sandwiched in the middle of the other.

The first is of Jesus raising Jarius’ daughter from the dead and the second is the healing of the hemorrhaging woman. One has been suffering for twelve years, while another has only been alive for twelve years. Both of them need to be touched.

Two times in this text Jesus is either touched by or touches someone who is unclean. Don’t take lightly the fact that Jesus is not contaminated by these encounters of touch. In fact, one of the most significance parts of these stories, is that the ones who were contaminated are restored to wholeness and given new life – not because of anything they have done, but because they are touched.

By the time we reach these miracle stories in the fifth chapter of Mark’s gospel, it is very clear that Jesus will cross boundaries that once defined the community; he will rewrite the rules, and is revealing a new day and a new way of life that has begun through him.

An important thing to notice about Mark’s gospel is just how significant the faith is of people who are not Jesus’ disciples. Many times in Mark, it’s Jesus’ closest followers, namely the disciples that are the last to figure out something or know what is going on. I’m not sure I believe that is only true of Jesus’ disciples 2,000 years ago. I think it’s often true of experiences that you and I share today.

As people who seek to follow the risen savior Jesus Christ, I believe that we have all experienced times of hopelessness.

There are times when we’ve kept a secret from our family or closest friends.

Maybe it has to do with our health or our marriage or another relationship in our life.

Maybe there is a relationship that defies healing.

Maybe we are concerned about the path a son or daughter has taken.

There are times when we are burdened with unbearable stress and anxiety. Maybe our business is failing or a devastating financial situation is consuming us with no end in sight.

Maybe there is a secret sin that has you in its grip.

At times like these, times with overwhelming feelings of hopelessness. Times when we hear a voice that cries out with the same desperation that Jairus and the woman has. You know the voice that I’m talking about. It’s the one that says, “If I but…” And too often in the middle of our desperate plea, the door of hope quickly slams shut with the response, “DO NOT TOUCH!”

But Jesus response is different. Jesus shows us that there is something tremendously powerful in touch. Touch heals us. Touch sets us free. Touch restores hope.

In the film The Hunger Games there is a powerful scene where President Snow, the dictator-esque ruler, asks his chief Games-maker why he thinks they must have a winner in the games. The chief doesn’t really understand the question and so President Snow says, “hope.” He wants to give the oppressed people that he rules over hope that maybe, just maybe, the odds will be in their favor and they will win the Hunger Games and escape their life of oppression. “Hope,” he says, “is the only thing more powerful than fear.” The president wants his chief games-maker to know that they must control and contain the hope they offer their people. “A little hope,” he states, “is effective; a lot of hope is dangerous.”

Jarius’ hope – if Jesus but touches my daughter is a dangerous hope. The woman’s hope – if I but touch his clothes is a dangerous hope. What’s your hope today?

I came across an essay this week called “Touch in the Church”. The author is writing about her experience with touch in her congregation.

“What is all this touching in church? It used to be a person could come to church and sit in the pew and not be bothered by all this friendliness and certainly not by touching. I used to come to church and leave untouched. Now I have to be nervous about what’s expected of me. I have to worry about responding to the person sitting next to me.

Oh, I wish it could be the way it used to be; I could just ask the person next to me: “How are you?” And the person could answer: “Oh, just fine.” And we’d both go home…strangers who have known each other for twenty years.

But now the pastor asks us to look at each other. I’m worried about the hurt look I saw in that woman’s eyes.

Now I’m concerned, because when the pastor asks us to greet one another, the man next to me held my hand so tightly I wondered if he had been touched in years.

Now I’m upset because the lady next to me cried and then apologized and said it was because I was so kind and that she needed a friend right now.

Now I have to get involved.

Now I have to suffer when this community suffers.

Now I have to be more than a person coming to observe a service.

That man last week told me I’d never know how much I’d touched his life. All I did was smile and tell him I understood what it was like to be lonely.

Lord, I’m not big enough to touch and be touched!

The stretching scares me. What if I disappoint somebody? What if I’m too pushy? What if I cling too much? What if somebody ignores me?

“Pass the peace.”

“The peace of Jesus Christ be with you”

“And also with you.”

And mean it.

Lord, I can’t resist meaning it any longer.

I’m touched by it, I’m part of it! I do care about that person next to me! I am involved! And I’m scared.

Lord, be here beside me. You touched me, Lord, so that I can touch and be touched. So that I can care and be cared for. So that I can share my life with others that belong to you.

All this touching in church – Lord, it’s changing me!”

There is no way to do the work of Jesus in this world without touch. God calls you and me to reach out and touch. God also calls you and me put down walls that we have built up and let others touch us. To touch the lonely, the unemployed, the immigrant, the widow, the addict, the elderly, the sick. To touch me. To touch you. To touch the person sitting next to you right now. To feel Jesus’ touch of hope. Touch that is not effective, but a dangerous and life-giving revelation of God’s love for you.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, don’t be afraid to be touched by the hand of God. And don’t be afraid to reach out and touch someone else with hand of God. Amen.

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June 18, 2012

“Plant. Sleep. Harvest. Repeat.” 06.17.2012 Sermon

By Bishop Craig Schweitzer

Mark 4:26-34 • June 17, 2012

Click here to hear an audio recording of this sermon.

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

Happy Father’s Day. Being a father is the most challenging while at the same time rewarding vocation that any of us who are fathers will ever be invited to live out. I give thanks each day for this calling and pray for strength and guidance as only God our Father can give.

Author and commentator Garrison Keillor has an interesting insight that I can relate to as a father of daughters. I had to laugh when I first heard Keillor say, “The father of a daughter is nothing but a high-class hostage. A father turns a stony face to his sons, berates them, shakes his antlers, paws the ground, snorts, runs them off into the underbrush, but when his daughter puts her arm over his shoulder and says, ‘Daddy, I need to ask you something,’ he is a pat of butter in a hot frying pan.”

 It seems fitting on this Father’s Day weekend that our gospel reading comes from the fourth chapter of Mark. It’s sometimes known as the seed chapter because it contains three parables from Jesus that all involve seeds. I’m especially drawn to the second parable because it calls us to plant, to rest and let God do a little work, and then to harvest. But before we get too far into that, let’s ask a question that all of us have probably asked at one time or another – “What is a parable anyway??”

I like Pastor Eugene Peterson’s response to that question in his book Tell It Slant. Peterson wrote, “The parable is a form of speech that has a style all its own. It is a way of saying something that requires the imaginative participation of the listener. A parable is not ordinarily used to tell us something new but to get us to notice something that we have overlooked although it has been right there before us for years. Or it is used to get us to take seriously something we have dismissed as unimportant because we have never seen the point of it. Before we know it, we are involved.”

Too often, I think followers of Jesus use the parables as a way to solve a problem or set the record straight or prove a political or moral point for something. I don’t believe that’s how Jesus intended us to hear the parables or use them in our life of faith. I don’t believe that Jesus taught with parables in order to give us black and white answers to questions. I think Jesus taught in parables to invite us into deeper conversation and ever unfolding questions about life and faith and everything in between. I think Jesus taught in parables to invite us into deeper relationship with God and each other as children of God.

The second parable today is my favorite. It’s known as the Parable of the Growing Seed. It’s the shortest of all the parables and only found in the gospel of Mark. As with many parables, it has an agricultural theme, which to be honest, causes a bit of a stumbling block for many people, especially people like me who have little experience or understanding of anything dealing with agriculture.

But I think Jesus is calling us to plant in this parable. What does this parable have to do with the world in which you and I live today? Sometimes parables are like the story of a first grade classroom where the teacher is reading the story of the Three Little Pigs to her students. The teacher comes to the part of the story where the first pig is trying to gather building materials for his home.

The teacher reads, “…and so the little pig went up to the man with a wheel barrow full of straw and said ‘Pardon me sir, but might I have some of that straw to build my house with?’”

The teacher stops and asks the class, “And what do you think the man said?”

One enthusiastic boy in the class raises his hand and says, “I know! I know! The man said, ‘Holy smokes! A talking pig!’”

So if we can only follow Jesus by knowing how to plant seeds and harvest in the same way a farmer does, I, for one, am in trouble. I’d be the one at harvest time saying, “Holy smokes! It’s time for the lawn mower!” When in fact a combine may be what we need.

I never afraid to admit that I’m a city kid. In fact, my cousins from Napoleon often called me a city-slicker when we were growing up. I’m born and raised in western North Dakota, but only have a few memories that connect me directly to farming.

I remember checking cattle a few times with a friend of our family’s who’s an Angus rancher in Logan County. I never did figure out what we were checking on when we checked cattle or if what we were checking on ever did in fact get checked.

I’ve also spent a few afternoons checking wheat fields with my father-in-law. He farms several thousand acres of winter and spring wheat in north central Montana. I’m not sure I know any aspect of my life in as much detail as he knows every inch of every crop in every field that he farms.

And one of the most tragic experiences of farming in my life was my attempt one morning to milk cows on my uncle’s dairy farm near Kintyre, North Dakota. It is one of the longest and most difficult mornings that I can remember.

Even though I am a native of North Dakota and consider myself a child of the North Dakota prairie, my story is not centered in the world of farming and agriculture. My story involves reading books and teaching; playing guitar and enjoying music; or enjoying a good cup of coffee that’s accompanied with engaging conversation.

The culture in Jesus’ day was largely agrarian. The culture that you and I live in today is pretty removed from an agrarian culture like that of Jesus’ time.

You and I may not plant seeds like a farmer, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t plant seeds. As fathers, we’re invited to plant seeds all the time. As parents, Wendy and I are planting seeds constantly in our daughter’s lives. Seeds of forgiveness and love for all of God’s people. Seeds that model the importance of hard work, taking time for rest and play, and caring for God’s creation. Wendy and I can’t control how or when or why these seeds grow, but they do. And each and every day, we get to experience and celebrate the abundant harvest. A harvest in our children that is greater than anything we could have grown or constructed on our own.

People of the resurrection, you and I are called to plant seeds, to take time for rest and play, and to live in confidence that the harvest will come. The good news of the resurrection of our savior Jesus Christ is that the harvest comes. Brothers and sisters in Christ, never never stop planting. Amen.

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