Sunday’s Thoughts

Perceptions can change in scripture and your mission can change too.

On Jan 18, the date of Peter’s confession Mark 8:27-30 Jesus went to the predominately pagan region of Caesarea Philippi to question and deepen his disciples’ understanding of his role and theirs. “Who do you say that I am?” Peter got it right- Jesus is the Messiah.

On Last Epiphany on the Transfiguration (Feb. 11) Mark 9:2-9, Peter now misread the situation wanted to build three tents, preserving the event much longer.

Now this Sunday on Lent 2 (Feb. 25) with an earlier sripture Mark 8:31-38 Peter who had correctly identified Christ as the Messiah now gets Christ’s mission wrong. Peter saw Jesus as his Messiah who was to save Israel from the Romans. Peter’s view of the Messiah was not one who went to the cross, rejected, and died. He was just told he was wrong but rebuked, set in his place.

This is a different response from when Jesus called the first disciples. Jesus calls the first disciples, saying simply, “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people”. In other words, there are people who want to hear Jesus’ message, and he invites them to follow and be part of spreading Good News that is eagerly received. They are part of the advertisment.

They have seen the results in healing the sick of all ills into many remote communities. He has fed the many and he has drawn huge crowds. And don’t forget his proclamation of a new Kingdom, not that of the Romans.

Now, Jesus is seemingly making an about face. Peter is questioning that saying – What is this Kingdom when the leader is tp be killed ?

Deny self, take up the cross and follow ? Now it seems to be a mission of confrontation that not everyone is up to. Peter is thinking “Did I sign up for this?”

Our confrontation is take Jesus message into the world where there is suffering is broad. We may not be setting up to be killed but there is death to many of our solitary desires to witness a larger pictures. As Debi Thomas writes “To take up a cross as Jesus did is to stand in the center of the world’s pain.”

“Taking up the cross means recognizing Christ crucified in every suffering soul and body that surrounds us, and pouring our energies and our lives into alleviating that pain — no matter what it costs.”

Our challenge for our ministries is to seek areas where is pain, trouble or other dislocation and see what we can do to ameliorate that. How can life be made better?

For instance, Sacred Ground will look at the food issue involving children. Food insecurity is higher among children than the population as a whole. While Caroline County provides free breakfast and lunches, there is the need for snacks for tutoring activities outside of the normal school day. What about meals at home on the weekends and during the summer ?

There other possible avenues involving mentoring and adopting a classroom that need to be discussed.

The SALT blog published this guide for Lent – “As Lent begins, this is the perfect week to reflect on the season and what it means in Christian life: an invitation to a 40-day journey of reflection, repentance, and preparation for the great mystery of the empty tomb. Now is the time to change our lives, to embark upon a kind of soulful spring cleaning. What in our personal and communal lives needs repentance or renewal, a “change of heart” or “change of life”? How do we need to be both humbled and strengthened? How can we better prepare for the radiant 50 days of Easter? Might a sojourn in the wilderness “with the wild beasts” be just what we need?”

Going further into the blog-“That is, the basis of Christian life is not our repentance, not our good works; rather, the basis of Christian life is what God has done and is doing, and our good works flow from the joyous, thankful recognition of that graceful liberation. True repentance — changing our lives and hearts for the better — flows from God’s activity in the world, not the other way around. In this way, Jesus’ sermon is a call not into anxious exertion, but rather into gratitude and joy.”

According to this, Lent should emphasize the positive moving forward and not gullies and valleys of repenetence. Moving forward is reconnecting to God, going deeper and expressing that in the world. We each need to consider our options. For me, it is looking forward to April 22 and Earth Day and collecting the excesses (plastic, trash) of our modern lives. It gets us outside as the days lenthen (Lent!) and promoges exercise. Stepping forward will be different for everyone. It’s finding that one or multiple things that will promote real liberation.

Lent does have a sense tension between the need for repentance and forgiveness and the sense of moving forward. We have a dialog between two priests from All Saints Episcopal in Frederick, MD about Lent from 2019 of also a tension they see in Lent.

As they noted, at the beginning we are reminded of our mortality by making the mark on our foreheads, a mark that come from the past – palms burned from last year’s Palm Sunday. They we come forward after a few prayers, celebrate and share communion and we are reminded of this everlasting life which moves forward. From we holding these two pieces in tension that we really enter into Lent.

On this Sunday, the children in God’s Children began learning the Lord’s Prayer. Jan and Elizabeth used a video method to teach the prayer through signing and then using a printed cross with the prayer printed on the cross’s arms so that the children could trace their way forard. They did very well and are well on the way to being able to say it in church

They moved foward, adding an addition connection in their church life. Learninig is a great practice for Lent. Coincidentally, this week, The Dean of Washington Cathedral in a meditation wrote that the Lord’s Prayer was the “perfect prayer.”

We are at a transition. Last Sunday, Feb. 4, God’s Garden children completed a banner and hung it on the altar. It is a transition from Epiphany to Lent with a banner first and then a change in the colors on the altar.

So to the trip to the mountain on Feb. 11, the Transfiguration is one too with the individuals involved in the world but at the same time separated. That’s the way it is sometimes going through changes.

Here is a piece that marks the transition- “Transfiguration, Beauty and Biblical Interpretation” by Zoltán Dörnyei

“We come to the Transfiguration at a critical point within salvation history: just a week earlier Peter had declared on behalf of the disciples that Jesus was ―the Messiah, the Son of the living God‖ (Matt 16:16), and from that point onwards Jesus started to talk about his orthcoming suffering, death and resurrection. His teaching also included the warning that if anybody wanted to follow him, they had to ―deny themselves and take up their cross‖ (Matt 16:24) as well as a declaration about his second coming ―in the glory of his Father‖ (Matt 16:27). The preparation stage was now over and the final, climactic phase of Jesus‘ earthly life – involving the last journey to Jerusalem and the Passion – was about to begin. The Transfiguration therefore marks a watershed in Jesus‘ ministry; in Michael Ramsey‘s words, it represents a ―height from which the reader looks down on one side upon the Galilean ministry and on the other side upon the Via Crucis.”

The Sermon from Tom Hughes spoke of a transition and where we should be going. “The whole idea is that in Christ we’re always becoming called to things as they were not before becoming a new person. ” On the Transfiguration, ““…He was transfigured. He became fully the person he was created to be.” Unlike Jesus we are not there.

Moving forward, Forward Movement for Feb. 14 includes this phrase – “Ash Wednesday is my favorite holy day because I am reminded that in the nothingness of dust, in God’s value of the inverse of our earthly values. I am filled with the wonder of creation and the reality of the unfailing and unconditional love of God. ” We are still finding that wonder, filling in the spaces, investigating the possibilities and becoming the people we are meant to be. There’s energy in that!

One of the possibilities is continuing our work supporting the larger community. The congregations responded on Sunday for our two outreach projects- 1. The SouperBowl 2. Supporting the Discretionary fund.

The SouperBowl collected 41 cans of food and 33 cards donated plus $75 in monetary donations. This is above last year’s 25 cans. The Disctionary Fund. A total of $270 was collected Feb 11, 2024. “In January, $850 of our discretionary fund helped 9 families with internet access, rent, and electricity.”

Another possibility is continuing to develop our youngest children in God’s Garden. Last week we spotlighted the creation of the Alleluia Banner. This week they added art work to a box and during the last hymn, took the Banner, placed it in the box and hid it away for Lent. They see this transition in life to the beauty that will eventually blossom at Easter.

There is a lot yet to be done

This week is unique in how it unfolds. The message from the Gospel shows Christ during a typical day as healer to Peter’s mother, casting out demons in the community and creating wholeness during his preaching.

But he found time for renewal – “In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed.” In Isaiah, “From Isaiah “but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.”

This is an important lesson for all of us in our time. The Washington Post reported in April 2022.”Unlike every other industrialized nation, the United States has no mandatory paid vacation or holiday leave. Workers who have paid leave often don’t take it. And even when we take leave, many of us can’t leave work behind. The technology that lets us work anywhere, anytime, makes it hard to disconnect even when we’re supposed to.”

Taken as a whole, last week’s Epiphany 4 prefigures Epiphany’s major themes — healing, restoration, and hope. We continue them this week (Epiphany 5) that will define the heart of Jesus’ mission.

Healing  – The passage pivots around four key verbs:  (“to come near”),  (“to take hold”),  (“to waken, to raise”) and  (“to serve, to minister”). The first two verbs go together: Jesus “comes near” Peter’s mother-in-law, close enough to “take hold” of her hand. Throughout the Gospel, Mark distinctively emphasizes the power of touch, including the idea (as we’ll see in the weeks ahead) that Jesus is unafraid to touch and be touched by the supposedly “unclean.”

Restoration – Having taken her hand, Jesus “raises her up.” The same word (egeiro) is used of Jesus himself at the resurrection — it’s there in the famous line, “He has been raised; he is not here” (Mark 16:6) — and so the term evokes a renewed strength, a reinvigoration, a reawakening, a restoration, a return. She is awakened – restored.

Illness not only debilitates the body but it also can cut a person off from his or her social life and contributions to community — and this can feel like a loss of dignity or purpose.

Hospitality was highly prized in the ancient world, and for early Christians, to be hospitable in a way that advanced the Jesus movement was both an art and an honor. in this way, for Mark, the healing in this story is not only a matter of a fever departing; it’s also a matter of restoration to community, and of participation in the movement. This social dimension of healing is a key theme to which Mark will return again and again.

Hope – And while the episode with the possessed man in Epiphany 4 provides a sense of what this liberation is “freedom from,” this week’s story points toward what it is “freedom for.”

What is she renewed for? For diakonos, “ministry, service,” the same root that gives us the word “deacon” (she is the original deacon!). What’s more, the word diakonos literally means “to kick up dust” — this is an active, practical, on-the-move, change-the-world sort of work. In short, she is lifted up to serve. She is freed for ministry, to kick up some dust and get some things done. She is the pioneer who blazes the trail for the anonymous woman who causes a little dust-up near the end of Mark’s Gospel by anointing Jesus (“what she has done will be told in remembrance of her,” Mark 14:3-9), and also for the group of women at the crucifixion who stay and keep watch and remain with the vandalized body, even as the male disciples panic and flee (see Mark 15:40-41; the Greek word translated as “provided for” is diakoneo).