Mark 9:38-50 by Garrett

Amputations, exorcisms, hell, demons – this should be fun.

There was a book written a few years back by an Episcopal priest entitled Jesus was an Episcopalian, and You Can Be One Too. It's a great little book. And it has me mostly convinced. But it's passages like this one that give me my doubts about Jesus' Anglican sensibilities.

"Doesn't Jesus know that we like a little more subtlety and indirection in our sermons; and all this talk on hell... Come on Jesus, put the bullhorn down."

Anyways it's one of the beauties of the lectionary that our denomination has to come to terms with this passage every 3 years. I'm just glad I don't have the children's sermon this week!

So what's Jesus getting at in this passage? Why is he talking like this?

I am reminded of Flannery O’Connor's fiction. If any of you have read O’Connor you know that she uses the grotesque – shocking, larger-than-life situations – to help communicate her point. She says this about her fiction:

“When you can assume your audience holds the same beliefs you do, you can relax a little and use more normal means of talking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision apparent by shock – to the hard of hearing you shout and for the almost-blind you draw large and startling figures.”

It’s a bit of what Jesus is doing this morning – a little shock therapy if you will. Drawing large and startling figures.

And Jesus has no choice but to do this. You'll remember that his disciples last week were squabbling about who was going to be the greatest. And this week they are up in arms about authentic ministry. "Jesus, there was a guy doing good ministry in your name, but he didn't believe like us, so we told him to knock it off."

Sadly, we know a little bit about this line of argument in the Episcopal church, don't we? If you want to be a real Christian, associated with the true church...fill in the blank. Oh the theological food fights we've seen.

And it's into this that Jesus drops the bomb of this mornings gospel. Guys, cut it out (no pun intended), being a Christian, following me, is much more exciting, much more joyful, than all this. Eternity, heaven and hell, hangs in the balance.

It makes me think of the first few pages of Tolkien's classic, The Hobbit. The great wizard Gandalf knocks on the door of Bilbo Baggins. Bilbo you'll remember is a hobbit, and hobbits are quiet folk, a people who love the quaintness of hearth and home. They like to smoke pipes and eat hearty meals, and they are decidedly averse to adventures, to risk and danger. Well Gandalf loves these things too, but he also knows about the strange events that are unfolding outside Bilbo's little neighborhood called The Shire. A world far more adventurous, and far more mysterious than Bilbo is aware of. And he wants to enlist Bilbo in the epic journey.

I kind of see us, as well as the disciples, like Bilbo, and it takes Jesus who has the full knowledge of the adventure to wake us up out of our quaint, provincial lives.

And I've got to be honest, most days I could use a knock on my door; a little shock therapy to wake me up. I have a superhuman ability of slipping into the rut of a day or a week, and just kind of coast along, beat-boppin' from one activity to the next, keeping my grouchiness to a minimum as best I can, until I can shamelessly unwind in my evening therapy at home, which consists of a pint of Ben and Jerry's and Pirates baseball.

Needless to say, I need passages like this sometimes, to remind me that eternity hangs in the balance.

What about you guys, are there any places in your life that could use a little shock therapy? It could be a rut like mine, or it could be a habit of mind, a particular attitude, or an old resentment that's stuck with you like a shadow.

One theologian puts it this way, which I think gets very much at the heart of what I am trying to say this morning: We Christians (whether we recognize it or not) are inhabiting something like "enemy-occupied territory---that is what this world is (Lewis writes). And Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us to take part in a great campaign of sabotage.”

I cannot help but wonder what my life, our lives, would look like if we saw the world in these terms - that our lives are a part of following the "rightful king" on the "great campaign of sabotage." Everything matters in this movement - what we do with our hands, and feet, and what we subject our eyes to, or what we shield our eyes from. Jesus wants every part of us, bodies and all, on board. From conversations at work, to how we talk to our spouses - he wants it all.

I can think of no better event to illustrate this cosmic battle than baptism.

In just a few moments we are going to ask Lucas' parents if they are up for this. Lou is going to ask them if they are willing to renounce Satan and the forces of evil.

In other words, we are going to ask them if they want to enlist their boy in the King's great sabotage.

And after baptizing him, well arm him for the journey and give him the light of Christ. And I see in this candle 2 reminders.

First, it will remind us that the world is a dark place - that there are forces and powers at work that are at cross-purposes with the kingdom. Sadly, there are people who refuse to see the world as a gift of God, and would rather use and exploit it for their own purposes. I really do believe this, and we don't have to look far for instances.

But, secondly, we are going to tell him the even better news: that the King has overcome, "that light, the very light that created the world, has redeemed the world; he has gone into the far country of death and darkness, descended into the abysses of hell, and has shined his light there." It's exciting stuff.

And the mission that he will join is the mission not just to survive the world, not just to get through the darkness; its a little more radical than that, isn't it? We are going to ask him to go light up the world, to be a light in the darkness. To join us in setting the world on fire with the hope and joy of the Gospel.

It's a risky adventure we are all on - this "great campaign of sabotage." But oh, how it's worth it.

Thanks be to God.