17th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 19B

17th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 19B September 16, 2018 Our gospel reading for today is the mid-point of Mark’s gospel, and it is also a crossroads for Jesus. In the first half of Mark’s gospel, Jesus spends all his energy on “creative resistance against death-dealing forces”. He is healing the sick, casting out demons, feeding hungry people… Our reading for today shows Jesus shifting focus. Today we see Jesus predicting his death for the first time out of three. We see Jesus looking toward the cross and sharing that those who follow him will walk a similar path. This week, I encountered a couple of different ideas that I will share with you today. The first is a lectionary commentary that had this to say about the gospel reading. “St. Augustine (and many theologians after him) often spoke of sin as a form of being curvatus in se, “curved inward on oneself” - the implication being that God’s redemption helps us unfurl and open up. It’s a helpful image for conceiving what Jesus is getting at when he speaks of “losing” and “saving” our lives. What’s the “for-the-sake-of-which” that animates our days? Are we living for ourselves, trying to save ourselves? Then we’re curved inward, like an empty fist. Are we living for each other, for the neighborhood, for the good news of God’s love and mercy? Then we’re curved outward, like an open, loving hand. But please note: the idea here is not to demean ourselves, or damage ourselves, or masochistically seek suffering for its own sake. Those are parodies of Jesus’ teaching, 180 degrees off the mark. Truly living for the sake of the Gospel means recognizing God’s love for each one of us, including ourselves. And think of how much stronger, how much more flexible, capable, and beautiful is an open hand, rather than a closed fist, tightly grasping at nothing!”i The second is the Lesser Feasts and Fasts commemoration for this past Wednesday that we marked at our weekly healing service. It was the feast day of John Henry Hobart who was bishop of New York in the early days of our country and our Episcopal Church. The collect for the day reads: “Revive your Church, Lord God of hosts, whenever it falls into complacency and sloth, by raising up devoted leaders, like your servant John Henry Hobart whom we remember today; and grant that their faith and vigor of mind may awaken your people to your message and their mission; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.” Our meditation for the day from the priest Sam Portaro had this to say about Hobart and the collect: “The collect for the commemoration of John Henry Hobart is a prayer for the revival of the church, a prayer to rouse us from ‘complacency and sloth,’ words we do not like to associate with ourselves. Yet we are complacent; if we did not like things the way we have them, we would make bolder moves to change them. And we are slothful; we do not exert ourselves on behalf of our faith with anything like the energy we can put forth for the things in our lives we deem worthwhile.”ii This brings me back to a question from the first passage: “What’s the ‘for-the-sake-of-which’ that animates our days?” Is it our work, our family, our children’s extracurricular activities, our vacations? Is it our college football team? Is it our status, our wealth, our reputation? Is it our church? What would our true faith look like; what would our relationship with God through God’s son Jesus Christ look like if we put as much energy into our life of faith, as we do into all these other things? Your invitation this week is ask yourself, what is your ‘for-the-sake-of-which’ that animates your days? Do you put as much energy into your relationship with God as you do other areas? Then invite God to show you the areas of your life where you are curved in on yourself and for God to show you the ways that you can become more curved outward. i. http://www.saltproject.org/progressive-christian-blog/2018/9/11/crossroads-salts-lectionary-commentary-for-seventeenth-week-after-pentecost ii.Potaro, Sam. Brightest and Best… John Henry Hobart September 12th. Cowley.