Broadway Christian Church · Columbia, Missouri
Morning Worship · March 25, 2007
Fifth Sunday in Lent
God of Invitation, thank you for inviting us into relationship with you and one another. Thank you for loving us and liking us and longing to partner with us in life. Amen.
Kim Ryan
I’m going to do something a little different this morning. I’m not going to read the Scripture at this point. I’m going to read it in the context and in the body of the message this morning. I just didn’t want you to worry that I had forgotten it. I didn’t want you distracted. The Scripture is coming.
Last week Rick shared with us some of the “Best Ever Things Kids Say.” It had come to him and me both from our friend Guy Adams. Rick saved me the Sunday School ones. Thank you, Rick. I have two I want to share with you.
The first one… “Solomon, from the Old Testament, had 300 wives and 700 porcupines. He was an actual hysterical figure, as well as being in the Bible. It sounds like he was sorta busy, too.”
One more… “Moses, from the Old Testament, led the Hebrew slaves to the Red Sea where they made unleavened bread, which is a bread made without any ingredients. Moses went up on Mount Cyanide to get the Ten Commandos. He died before he ever reached Canada, but his commandos made it.”
We love these. Don’t we? We love them, whether they come to us via e-mail, or in a sermon. We love to be able to laugh at the way children interpret what they hear and how they fill in the blanks on what they don’t know. Years ago, an entire television show was dedicated to this kind of enjoyment. Some of you will remember it. Remember Art Linkletter’s “Kids Say the Darndest Things.” I barely remember it. I was so young. You are laughing way too hard on that one.
Today, the tables have been turned. Have you seen the hottest new game show that’s out? Do you know which one? “Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader?” It’s hosted by Jeff Foxworthy. It comes on right after “American Idol.” In this show, adults are faced with the actual test questions from first through fifth grade subjects. Guess what? Adults say the darndest things. It’s downright funny the things they don’t know and how they interpret what they’ve heard, or don’t remember, and how they fill in the blanks. Here are just a couple of recent stumpers in the show.
“Name the most western state in the United States, from these choices: California, Nevada, and Alaska.” The adult answer: California. Right answer: Alaska.
Fortunately, on the show there are really smart fifth graders who can help out the adult contestants. The adults can look on the kids’ paper for their answer. They can either peek, or copy. Or if they just have the wrong answer all together, then the fifth grader can actually save them on their way to $500,000.
Here’s the other one. Which continent is also a country? Now after lengthy deliberation, the adult said, “All of them.” North America is a country. Right? The right answer would be: Australia.
Oh, we’re smarter than fifth graders. Isn’t that great?
At the end, if they have decided to take their money and run, or just bombed out totally, the one thing the adult has to do is to look at the camera and say, “I am not smarter than a fifth grader.”
It is a fun show, and it is a great reminder of just how much we don’t know, really. But it doesn’t take a game show to remind me of that. I don’t know about you, but I’m constantly surprised by what I don’t know.
Recently I learned something brand new related to the Bible. It is one of the things I love about our Bible, our sacred Scriptures. They are so rich. They are so profound. They are even so complex that there is always something new to learn. This is what I didn’t know. Did you know that there are only four stories in the New Testament gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John that are in all four of those gospels? Only four. There are lots of stories in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, but there only four of those stories that are in all four gospels. Did you know that? I didn’t know that.
So I did a survey of my own. I asked some seasoned 75-year-olds who will remain unnamed, and a seasoned 15-year-old who will remain unnamed. “What four stories are in all four gospels?”
They had some really good guesses. They guessed the angel visiting Mary. No. The story of Mary and Martha – the two sisters. No. The Sermon on the Mount. No. The woman caught in adultery. No. The Last Supper. No. The crucifixion, they finally guessed. Yes. That one is in all four. All four gospels have the story of the crucifixion.
Here are the four: the baptism of Jesus, Jesus feeding the 5,000, the woman anointing Jesus, and the crucifixion. We might want to say, “Well, and the resurrection.” But the truth is, the resurrection stories we have in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are significantly different from each other, so they are not really the same story.
Here is just a quick aside. I love the curriculum that Barb Stephenson and her team have selected for our third through fifth graders with our Pathways new program. In just a few weeks, our third through fifth graders will have a chance to do a very interesting exercise with the resurrection stories. They are going to be divided into four small groups, and each group will read a story – one from Matthew, one from Mark, one from Luke, and one from John. Then they are going to watch a cartoon version of the resurrection, and they are going to be asked to figure out and point out what the similarities are and the differences are between the story they read in their gospel and the way it was portrayed on the cartoon.
Now don’t tell them this, but guess what they are going to find out? Not only is their particular story going to be different than the cartoon version; their stories are going to be different from each other’s version. Matthew’s story is going to be different from Luke’s. Luke’s story is going to be different than John’s. And John’s story is going to be a little different than Mark’s. It’s going to be a great exercise. Then they are going to get to talk about that. Why might that be? What’s going on here? They are going to ask really important questions and very revealing questions about their Bible.
They are not going to be 24-years-old, like I was in graduate school trying to write a paper synthesizing the four resurrection stories that my New Testament professor had requested, only to be surprised and shocked to discover it can’t really be done. And then to have to start asking those important and revealing questions about the Bible while I teetered on the edge of “What? What do you mean? You can’t really combine them into one cohesive story?” I didn’t know that. Nobody had told me that. But our third through fifth graders are going to experience that. It is going to open the Bible up to them in some great and exciting ways.
OK. Back to the four stories. Only four. In recent weeks I have been spending time with these four stories. I have been wondering, “So what is unique about these four? Why just these four? Why were these particular four significant enough to be remembered, and written down, and held before the various communities of faith from which they emerged? Why these four?” I wondered.
Our preschool children are encouraged and invited to wonder as they are offered Bible stories in their Sunday School program. They’re invited to receive a story and to wonder about that story. “Well, I wonder why Moses went to Canada?” Not really. He didn’t really go to Canada. “I wonder what Jesus felt when he met with his disciples?” “I wonder how it was to sit at a table and share a meal with Jesus?” They wonder. And I would like to invite us to wonder this morning in a similar kind of way about these stories.
We’re not going to do the crucifixion story today, because in the next two weeks as we move toward Easter, we’ll be spending some very intense focus on the crucifixion story. So I want to let us hear the other three stories. I want to invite you and invite myself to listen for the treasure in each one of these three stories, but to especially listen to what might be a thread in all three of them.
So let me read the stories. I’m going to be reading these from Mark’s version. I know your worship bulletin says, “John.” This was not creator error on their part. This is what happens when the minister changes her mind after the worship bulletin has been published.
All of these stories will be coming from Mark’s version, because they are briefer. Mark does a shorter version of the stories. It was probably the earliest version, probably written between 60 and 70 A.D. Matthew and Luke use Mark’s stories and added to them and changed and creatively brought their own uniqueness to those stories somewhere around 70 to 100 A.D. Then John’s gospel, which is very different from the other three, was written probably between 90 to 100 A.D.
Reading from Mark. Please just let these stories come over you. Receive them. Think about them for just a moment. Just ten seconds afterwards, and hear them.
Scripture
Mark 1:7-11
As John preached he said, “The real action comes next. The star in this drama, to whom I’m a mere stagehand, will change your life. I’m baptizing you here in the river, turning your old life in for a kingdom life. His baptism – a holy baptism by the Holy Spirit – will change you from the inside out.”
At this time, Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. The moment he came out of the water, he saw the sky split open and God’s Spirit, looking like a dove, come down on him. Along with the Spirit, a voice: “You are my Son, chosen and marked by my love, pride of my life.”
The second story…
Mark 6:34-44
At the sight of the huge crowd, Jesus’ heart broke – like sheep with no shepherd they were. Jesus went right to work teaching them.
When his disciples thought this had gone on long enough – it was now quite late in the day – they interrupted: “We are a long way out in the country, and it’s very late. Pronounce a benediction and send these folks off so they can get some supper.”
Jesus said, “You do it. Fix supper for them.”
They replied, “Are you serious? You want us to go spend a fortune on food for their supper?”
But he was quite serious. “How many loaves of bread do you have? Take an inventory.”
That didn’t take long. “Five,” they said, “plus two fish.”
(Now in my Sunday School class, it was a little boy who had those five loaves and two fish. That is only in John’s telling of the story. It is the one thing that is a little different.)
Jesus got them all to sit down in groups of fifty or a hundred – they looked like a patchwork quilt of wildflowers spread out on the green grass! He took the five loaves and two fish, lifted his face to heaven in prayer, blessed, broke, and gave the bread to his disciples, and the disciples in turn gave it to the people. He did the same with the fish. They all ate their fill. The disciples gathered twelve baskets of leftovers. More than five thousand were at the supper.
And the third story…
Mark 14:3-9
Jesus was at Bethany, a guest of Simon the Leper. While he was eating dinner, a woman came up carrying a bottle of very expensive perfume. Opening the bottle, she poured it on his head. (John and Luke will say on his feet.) Some of the guests became furious among themselves. “That’s criminal! A sheer waste! This perfume could have been sold for well over a year’s wages and handed out to the poor.” They swelled up in anger, nearly bursting with indignation over her.
But Jesus said, “Let her alone. Why are you giving her a hard time? She has just done something wonderfully significant for me. You will have the poor with you every day for the rest of your lives. Whenever you feel like it, you can do something for them. Not so with me. She did what she could when she could – she pre-anointed my body for burial. And you can be sure that wherever in the whole world the Message is preached, what she just did is going to be talked about admiringly.”
Returning to the Message
These are our three stories.
I wonder. What did you hear in those stories? I wonder. What did you observe in the actions of Jesus? What did you notice? Is there a common thread that connected them?
One of the stories is at the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry. One is one of the most-noted and obviously-remembered miracles, and one is near the end of his life.
As I had wondered about these stories, here’s one of the discoveries. Each one of these, and all three of them, reveal Jesus in relationship with others. Whatever he is doing in the story, whatever is happening, he is connected relationally with others. This is not Jesus, the Lone Ranger. Jesus with John. Jesus with the disciples, and the crowd, and the little boy. Jesus with the woman.
Now, our relationships can take several forms. Can’t they? There can be relationships of independency. As Simon and Garfunkel use to sing, “I am a rock. I am an island. I touch no one, and no one touches me.” That is not a description of Jesus and his relationships in these stories.
We have relationships of dependency, which my pastoral counseling professor use to tell me in his gravely voice, “Breeds contempt.” Yikes! This is not that kind of story about Jesus. It is not a story of dependency relationship.
There are such things as relationships of codependency. We know those kinds of relationships breed unhealthy, toxic, and destructive characteristics where they exist.
But we also have relationships of interdependency. A relationship of give and take. A relationship of giving and receiving, of encouraging the other, not at the expense of one over the other, but for the enrichment of both, and beyond the enrichment of both. Both are encouraged. Both are strengthened. For the reaching out to others. It strikes me that Jesus is evidencing interdependent relationships in every one of these three stories.
With his cousin John, he receives the gift of baptism, launching his own ministry, and giving his solidarity, his presence to John’s ministry. But beyond that, Jesus is actually connecting in a whole web of relationships in his Jewish tradition and upbringing.
You know… I use to think that Christians invented baptism. Well, I thought that until I stood below where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in Qumran. In the midst of archeological remains of a Jewish community that would have been dated before the time of Jesus, the Essene community, and in that community they have found baptistries. So Jesus’ baptism was a relationship, in interdependent relationship, not only with John, but also with his ancestors of the faith – his faith tradition.
Then in the story of the bounteous picnic, Jesus depends on the meager but generous gift, the sharing of a few fish and loaves of bread. This is not a something-from-nothing miracle. It’s a miracle of giving, and receiving, and giving more, and multiplying the giving to serve others extravagantly. But Jesus needed the gift, and even the disciples did also to help minister to those 5,000 and more people.
In the third story, a story of Jesus being seen – truly seen – and understood, cherished by a woman willing to partner with him even into death, even against criticism. Some students of the Bible believe this woman was possibly Mary Magdalene. She would endure his death at the cross. She would be the first to receive the reality of his resurrection. He needed this woman’s tender mercy. He acknowledged that, as she had offered something so significant to him.
The stories of relationship – interdependent relationship. I wonder what these stories can say to us about Jesus, and about God, and about ourselves?
With our Worship and Wonder lessons with our preschoolers, we don’t try to offer them the one point-fits-all, the one-message-fits all. We invite them into wondering about the story and finding their answer, multiple answers in relationship to the story. So right now, I have to tell you. I’m trying to resist that, “OK, let me wrap up this sermon in a tidy little way.” “The one-size-fits-all point is…” Instead, I invite us to wonder and to question with these stories, and to leave room for the Spirit to move, and even to surprise us with what may be there.
However, I’m not resisting it well. The point is, or one point is, if we believe Jesus is a window to the ways of God, and we do, then Jesus – God – seems to be inviting us into interdependent relationships. Interdependent relationships with the Creator of all, with the Lover of all. The bottom line is God loves us. But the other bottom line is God needs us. God wants us in a relationship of interdependency.
And I will tell you that is going to lead me to even more wondering, but in the meantime, thanks be to God, the Creator and the Lover of all. Thanks be to Jesus for the way he lived his life, the relationships he created, and even those he interdependently depended upon. And thanks be for the stories of our faith, for the wondering, and the wonder they bring to us in our lives.
Amen.
Anointed One, thank you for inviting us to be your companions in ministry. Help us to receive the ministries of others. Help us to offer and minister to others. And, help us to know when to grab a partner and really make a difference. Amen.
