Jeremiah 11:18 – 20 :: Psalm 54 :: James 3:13 -4:3, 7 – 8a :: Mark 9:30 – 37
This is the homily given at Christ Evangelical Lutheran Church (ELCA), Gettysburg, Pennsylvania on Sunday, September 22, 2024 for Fr. Gene Tucker.
“THE MYSTERY OF
FAITH”
(Homily
text: Mark 9:30 – 37)
A
good part of my Army career was spent as a singer in the U. S. Army Chorus,
which is an element of the U. S. Army Band (Pershing’s Own) in Washington, D.C.
As
part of our after-dinner entertainment, we would often close our performance
with a setting of a song that came from the early years of World War II,
entitled “Dogface Soldier”.
Some
lines from that song offer us a way to begin to consider our Gospel reading for
this morning. Here are the lyrics I have in mind:
I wouldn’t give a bean
to be a fancy-pants Marine,
I’d rather be a Dogface Soldier like I am.
I wouldn’t trade my old
ODs for all the Navy’s dungarees,
‘cause I’m the walkin’ pride of Uncle Sam.
On all the posters that
I read, it says, “The Army Builds Men”,
so they’re tearing me down to build me over again …
Here-in
lies a mystery: Each new recruit to the military is infinitely valuable, but
only if that new recruit can be torn down in order to be rebuilt. For our walk
of faith, we are reminded that each one of us is infinitely valuable to God,
but only if we offer only ourselves to be remolded into the image of God.
That
“tearing down, in order to rebuild” sentiment in the song lies at the heart of
what Jesus is doing in this morning’s Gospel text, reminding His disciples
that, in order to be useful to God, they’re going to have to allow themselves
to be torn down, so that the Lord can rebuild and remold them into useful tools
for the ministry that lies ahead of them.
Before
we look at this morning’s text, let’s back up to last Sunday’s appointed text
in order to see where we’ve been.
Last
week, we hear Jesus ask His disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man
is?” In response, the disciples offer various answers (probably ones they’d
heard from the crowds). Then, Jesus asks “But who do you say that I am?” Peter
says, “You are the Messiah, the Christ”.
Perhaps
at that point, the Lord figures that the disciples are ready for the next
lesson, so He says that the Son of Man will go to Jerusalem, where He will
suffer, die and be raised on the third day. Peter takes Jesus aside and begins
to rebuke Him. Jesus responds by saying, “Get behind me, Satan, you are
thinking like the world thinks, not as God thinks”. Then Jesus makes explicitly
clear where the road to Jerusalem leads: To the cross.
The
cross is the perfect example of that “tearing down”, self-emptying process with
which the walk with God, the walk to usefulness in God’s plans, begins.
Now, this morning, Jesus repeats the prediction of what will happen once He gets to Jerusalem.[1]
Then,
Jesus offers an object lesson on the requirement that, in order to enter the
kingdom, we can bring only ourselves, leaving behind any pretense, any past
achievements or status: He take a little child and sets the child in the midst
of the disciples. While we may think that this is a lovely picture, in the
culture of the day, there’s more going on….in the culture of the day, a child
was a nobody. Oh, yes, children were an older person’s security in their old
age, but the mystery is that children were not regarded with much value, unlike
the attitudes in our own society today.
So
the mystery unfolds: To enter the kingdom and to be useful to God, one must bring
only ourselves, allowing God to “tear us down” in order to rebuild us again.
Perhaps
we shouldn’t be too hard on that original band of Jesus’ followers. After all,
their claims to self-importance simply mirror the ways of the world in which
they lived. The scribes, Pharisees and the priests all promoted their own
importance. So did the Romans. Might makes right, the most powerful win, etc.
But
Holy Scripture offers us a completely different set of values: Consider, for
example, that it is often the younger who is more favored in God’s sight. It is
the poor, the lowly, the outcast, whom the Lord seeks out.
Being
in the world, for people of faith, brings along with it the challenge that we
mustn’t allow the attitudes of the world to seep into our set of values and the
ways we think and behave. Nor must the Church allow such values to infiltrate
its life and witness to the world.
To
assist in resisting the attitudes of the world, we engage in confession at the
beginning of our liturgy, bringing only ourselves and offering to God
ourselves, in all honesty confessing the ways in which we’ve not honored God’s
ways and will for us. We come in Holy Baptism, offering only ourselves,
allowing this ritual death and resurrection process to begin our walk with God.
We come to the holy table of the Eucharist, being reminded that it is a ritual
re-enactment of Jesus’ own self-emptying process on the cross for our welfare
and for our salvation. We come to this holy table, seeking not to be consoled,
but to be remolded into the image of Christ. We come, not to only to be
comforted, but to be challenged.
Each
of these liturgical acts has in common the conviction that we must bring only
ourselves in offering to God. The mystery is that our very selves is that one
thing that God most seeks to receive.
Come,
Holy Spirit, kindle within our hearts the willingness to be emptied, that we
might be rebuilt and remolded into useful tools for God’s purposes and work.
AMEN.
[1] There are three such predictions in Mark’s
text.
