Readings for October 11, 2015, Proper 23B

• Amos 5:6-7, 10-15 and Psalm 90:12-17 
• Hebrews 4:12-16 
• Mark 10:17-31

Un-Masking, sermon by Rev. Kinsey
I had so much fun at our Family Art Day yesterday.  John and Jennifer and Amy had everything set up so perfect.  Our after-school space sharing partners, PCO, had a half dozen high school girls ready to help.  And Trudy and Michael, Betty and Oliver and Lisa, finished off the final details and even went, with masks on, to invite families over from Broman Park, across the alley.  It was fun too, watching the kids making their masks, with stickers and sparkles, and feathers and markers.  Each mask was individually their own, and they got to take it home with them and wear it for Halloween if they wanted to.  And the Mural creation was really great too!  Getting your hand painted and making your hand-print on the canvass was awesome.  Parents, and adults did it too, getting all messy and silly, and getting to feel like a kid again, themselves! 
 
I got to meet many of the families too, mostly from the neighborhood, and in talking with one father about the mask-making, he told me, in his own philosophical way, that not only do we wear masks at Halloween, but we all wear masks in our lives, year-round; that’s what we do, that’s who we are.  And then he realized, as he said it to me, you could preach on that!  I bet I could, I said, that’s good stuff.  But, does it go with our appointed readings I wondered?! 
 
Well, I’ll let you be the judge of that!  But if you think about it, the man running up to Jesus with his urgent question about “life in the age to come,” was, in the course of their conversation, soon to be un-masked by Jesus.
 
Jesus plays it modestly with him, at first, claiming not to have any special knowledge or teaching as a Rabbi, reminding him simply of following the Commandments that everyone is called to follow: “You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; You shall not defraud; Honor your father and mother.” 
 
Now, if you remember back to your confirmation lessons, or wherever you may have learned about the list of 10 Commandments, you may recognize that this is not the complete list.  In fact there are just six that Jesus recites, and one of them is a curious re-writing, or paraphrase of the 10th, “you shall not defraud,” which we normally hear as, “you shall not covet.”  But all six are from what is called the 2nd Table, or the Commandments having to do with our relationships with one another, human to human.  And none are from the 1st Table, or our human relationship with God.  So, it’s all about what we do.
 
The man responds immediately that, there’s no problem then, he’s kept all these commandments since he was young.  He’s confident he has passed the test.  And who are we to judge, maybe he has?!  But Jesus, looking at him, "with a gaze that burrows into his soul," and also with an intuition guided by "parental affection" (Joel Markus), loved him intently, and said, “You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.”  Jesus un-masks him, completely!
 
But this saddens the rich man.  Remember how at first he came with such hope and lightness, kneeling before, Rabbi Jesus.  And now, “he was shocked and went away grieving,” it says, “for he had many possessions.”  The man with everything, lacks one important thing that is blocking his way to the new age, says Jesus.  For this man, at least, it’s his riches, and how he got them.  Some people, of course, will need to have, some possessions, in Jesus’ realm of God.  We know, for example, when he sends the disciples out 2 x 2, he expects that they will be housed and fed by those who receive them – by those who own a home and have a refrigerator and well-stocked pantry, to share from. So, not everyone is supposed to sell all that they have.
 
So why is this mans’ possessions in particular, keeping him from following Jesus?  The key may lie in the Commandment Jesus re-wrote, “you shall not defraud,” which had a rather specific reference for the rich of Jesus’ day – and our own – that is, how some become rich, by defrauding others.  The disciples knew the perils of their subsistence living as fishers and farmers, and how the rich lenders would take advantage of them, keeping them in their poverty.  Today, for example, we have seen how, in the Great Recession, the richest bankers, by deliberately gambling on the Stock Market, tanked the economy and defrauded many of their pensions and homes, for their own profit.
 
No doubt, Jesus knows the man is not telling the whole truth about following the Ten Commandments.  And yet, he did love him for his quest, and offered him a way out of his dilemma.  Come and follow me, he told him.
 
“Discipleship begins,” as New Testament scholar Katherine Grieb says, “when the one thing that enslaves us is renounced, and all its claims upon us are dissolved.” (Katherine Grieb, CC: 10/7/2009)
 
Jesus de-masked the rich man, seeing him clearly for who he was.  And Jesus sees us clearly and fully for who we are.  We cannot find a mask cute enough, or scary enough, or deceptive enough, that Jesus cannot see through, for what it is.  We all wear masks.  Sometimes we have to, just to get through the day.  But the masks we wear may be best at fooling ourselves, more than others. 
 
There’s one more clue, to understand the loving gaze of Jesus as an un-masking of the rich man. The clue is found in the Parable of the Sower, the first and longest parable of Jesus in Mark’s gospel, and how the rich man is a classic example of the seed sown among the thorns.  When Jesus interprets the Parable of the Sower to the disciples, he tells them that, the seeds “sown among the thorns… are the ones who hear the word, but, the lure of wealth, and the desire for other things, come in and choke the word, and it yields nothing.” 
 
The rich man hears the word from Jesus, but the lure of wealth and desire for more possessions, chokes it out, and it cannot grow.  At least not that day! 
 
Jesus turns his gaze on his disciples then, looking at them lovingly, and straight in the eye.  “How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God,” Jesus tells them.  They are his followers, but this is perplexing to them… and they were greatly astounded, saying to one another, “Then who can be saved?”  They probably see Riches and Possessions as a blessing from God, which would not be unusual in that day and age, and would explain their shocked reaction to Jesus’s harsh words about the rich not being able to enter, “life in the age to come.” 
 
But Jesus reverses what we normally conceive as truth: “Many who are first will be last, and the last will be first,” he told them, just as we saw when the rich man’s initial joy and excitement turned to sadness, as he walked away, unable to follow Jesus.
 
But Jesus looks intently at them again, and said, “For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.”  Another reversal!
 
None of us can earn our way to, life in the age to come, any more than a blessed rich man, or the very followers of Jesus, can.  We all wear masks in an attempt to hide our coveting from our friends, and family, and neighbors, and perhaps especially from our own eyes.  We all have fallen short of the glory of God. 
 
But the good news is: nothing is impossible with God.  God can and does reverse the impossible.  For God, all things are possible.  God alone is good -- and Jesus, insofar as he reveals God.
 
Perhaps then, it is even possible to live into the realm of God, right now, learning to shed our masks; learning not to covet or defraud, but to share, and find the true treasure of life – which is trusting in the saving promise of God’s open possibilities. 
 
Perhaps, even the rich man came back, later on, having sold his possessions to give to the poor, and desiring now to follow Jesus, his good teacher. 

Readings for 18th Sunday after Pentecost, 9/27/15
Proper 21B

• Numbers 11:4-6, 10-16, 24-29 and Psalm 19:7-14 
• James 5:13-20  
• Mark 9:38-50

Culture of Encounter, by Pastor Kinsey
​“Dear Friends, I feel many different emotions standing here at Ground Zero,” Pope Francis began his remarks on Friday, …here “where thousands of lives were taken in a senseless act of destruction.  Here grief is palpable.
 
“A few moments ago I met some of the families of the fallen first responders,” said the leader of Roman Catholicism.  “Meeting them made me see once again, how acts of destruction are never impersonal, abstract or merely material. They always have a face; a concrete story; names.  In those family members, we see the face of pain, a pain which still touches us and cries out to heaven.”
 
And the “heaven” that Pope Francis envisions, is a very life-affirming and inclusive heaven. Leaders from many major faith traditions: Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Sikh, as well as Orthodox Christian, were on stage with him at the 911 Memorial Museum.  What a remarkable statement to make.  Not so much in words, as in symbol and act – a ‘culture of encounter.’ 
 
Here at Ground Zero, where so much of America in 2001 quickly turned their scant knowledge of Islam into Islamaphobia and hatred, Pope Francis transformed his stage into an act of outreach and beauty towards Muslims and all people of faith.  Francis may not have changed the doctrine of closed communion within the Roman Catholic Church, but he has gone out his way to say that ‘all religions are true’ and demonstrated it this past Friday, in his willingness to pray with people of all major faith traditions.
 
Sayyid M. Syeed, an imam who works with the Islamic Society of North America said, “Francis’ visit is even more important for Muslims than it is for Catholics.  This pope,” the imam said, “is our pope.” 
 
Francis takes his name, of course, from that 13 century saint, Francis of Assisi, who deserted the military and renounced violence, in the time of the Crusades.  Saint Francis once counseled Christians to stop their violence against Muslims, at a time as difficult as ours is, to find peace.  Jesus said, “Salt is good; but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it?  Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.”
 
In our gospel reading today, the disciples ramp up their competitive nature and complain to Jesus that there is a ‘maverick exorcist,’(Ched Myers) they think Jesus should stop.  ‘If he’s not following us, how can we approve?  How can he not be a threat to us?’ they say.
 
But Jesus has no problem with this type of rogue healer.  There is not, a limited amount of God’s power to go around, like a bottle of olive oil that will someday run dry.  God’s love never ends, and healing in Jesus name can only produce good, and reflect well on healer, and those who are made well.  “Whoever is not against us, is for us,” Jesus tells them.  “For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward.”
 
A striking picture of Francis, taken shortly after his elevation to pope in 2013, showed him washing the feet of an imprisoned Muslim woman – which is a kind of interfaith twist, on our Maundy Thursday tradition.
 
Pope Francis, even before he became Pope, was reaching out in this way.  He was one of the first public figures to sign a petition calling for justice over the 1994 hate crime that killed more than a hundred Jews, in his native Buenos Aires.  Soon after, he became fast friends with Argentine Rabbi Abraham Skorka.  Francis and Rabbi Skorka co-authored a book together, and even co-hosted a television program.  In fact, the rabbi has been seen making frequent trips across the Atlantic to continue to visit his friend at the Vatican.
 
Papal biographer Austen Ivereigh explains, that rather than conventional interfaith dialogue, Pope Francis is interested in what he calls the ‘culture of encounter,’ building trust with another person, instead of trying to convert them.  When you create space for the Holy Spirit to act, then God can use that to unite people, whether they are of the same faith or not.
 
When Kim and I were in NY a couple years ago, we took time to visit the 9/11 Memorial site, even before the Museum was completed.  But the pools at Ground Zero, where the Pope, with Cardinal Dolan, prayed and laid a white rose, were already completed.  Viewing the pools in person is deeply moving, the way they invoke the falling-in of the Twin Towers, as water cascades quickly and powerfully from ground level, down many stories below, along dark marble walls to a bottom you can barely see.  It can bring it all back. 
 
And as the Pope said in his remarks, “The flowing water is also a symbol of our tears. Tears at so much devastation and ruin, past and present. This is a place where we shed tears, we weep out of a sense of helplessness in the face of injustice, murder, and the failure to settle conflicts through dialogue. Here we mourn the wrongful and senseless loss of innocent lives because of the inability to find solutions which respect the common good.  This flowing water reminds us of yesterday’s tears, but also, of all the tears still being shed today.”
 
We believe that, from water comes life.  Not only biologically, but sacramentally, in our baptisms – it is water in which we are cleansed, and re-born children of God.  The water of the 9/11 Memorial Pools are not baptismal waters, but waters of tear’s, the remembrance of grief, and our failure to reach out from faith and love to find common ground, without the need for violence. 
 
Are there ways in which we as Americans made a ‘culture of encounter’ difficult before 9/11, or after?  Are there ways we could support peace now in reaching out as Christians? 
 
“Truly I tell you,” said Jesus, “whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward.” 
 
The disciples object to the maverick exorcist because he is not following them!  Once again the disciples fail to “get it,” in Mark’s gospel.  Aren’t the disciples supposed to be the ones who are the followers of Jesus, as their name implies!?  Are they still consumed with determining who among them is the greatest, and next in line, to Jesus?  Now they even seem to think they are already on par with Jesus, that they should be followed.  But they are not yet ready to bear the name of Christ; the name of the Messiah, as Jesus asks in a humble “culture of encounter.” 
 
So Jesus strongly reminds the disciples how deadly it is to put a stumbling block before other believers.  If your foot, or your eye, causes anyone else to stumble in their faith, like your desire to stop this rogue healer, it’s on you, you are responsible.  It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God, without them. 
 
“Everyone will be salted with fire,” said Jesus.  “Salt is good; but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it?  Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.”
 
Pope Francis, in another first, perhaps, has shared interfaith Christmas Eve Mass with Jewish friends, and always, it is said, making sure the wine is kosher!  These gestures of openness go to the very source of Christianity, we could say, back to Jesus, who was radically open to others, anyone who was not against him, encouraging extreme humbleness, in the gift of a cup of water to drink, a gesture worthy of an eternal reward. 
 
We are followers of this Messiah – disciples – unafraid to learn from others, as well as share our faith, in a ‘culture of encounter,’ where we find that the Holy Spirit is already active, amidst our tears – which wash and transform – allowing us to also experience joy, in the diverse world God has created with many religions – and hopeful for a very life-giving and inclusive heaven.