Text: Mark 8:27-36

Speaker: Mark Rupp

During my early childhood, I was, for lack of a better way of putting it, awesome.  Let me give you some examples: First, not only did I have an illustrated book of dragons, but I also had an aunt who used her scanner and some printable iron-on transfers to make me t-shirts (plural) with pictures of those dragons on them, which I wore for far longer into my childhood than was probably socially acceptable.  Second, I distinctly remember the day my mother chipped the end of one of her wooden spoons and tried to throw it away.  I dug it out of the trash, gave it a splash of color with some markers, glued one of those metal canning lids to the end, and then proceeded to spend countless hours pretending it was a magic wand.  Third, just in case you need another example of how awesome I was, I had a hiding spot in the back part of our property behind some tall weeds and assorted rubble where I would collect different kinds of plants and other ingredients and would pretend (or perhaps hope) that if I got just the right combination I could make something happen. 

I know what you’re thinking: “Mark, why do you keep talking about being awesome in the past tense, like it is something you grew out of?”  To you, I say: thank you and you’re right and you should really stop by my apartment some time and check out my shelf full of pewter wizards and dragons…and wizards riding dragons. 

I think all people at some point in their lives believe, or at least want to believe, that the kind of magic we hear about in stories is real, the kind of magic that is about power and being able to…

Text: Mark 7:24-30

Within the last decade the story of the Syrophoenician woman has gone from being one of my least favorite gospel stories to one of my favorites.  Least favorite, because, well, what do you do with the fact that Jesus uses an ethnic slur to refer to a foreign woman – to her face.  She’s a mother with an ailing daughter doing what any good parent would do in her situation – advocating for her child.  Jesus’ initial response is to refer to her, her daughter, her people, as dogs.  This is Jesus, the compassionate.  Jesus, the all-inclusive.  Jesus, who certainly had a bumper sticker on his robe which said “God bless the whole world, no exceptions.”    Our “Love your neighbor” Jesus.  Our “Love your enemy” Jesus.  Our Jesus calls a foreign woman a dog.

Surely there’s been some kind of mistake.  Surely he didn’t mean it in the way it might come across.   Maybe the English translator was dyslexic and wrote ‘dog’ when Jesus had really said ‘god’.  Unlikely.

There are a couple different ways of interpreting this story which keep Jesus’ record clean.  One is noting that the word used here for dog actually means little dog, a unique form of the word in the New Testament.  Yes, referring to someone as a dog isn’t nice, but Jesus softens the tone by calling her a puppy.  Puppies are fun and friendly, right?

It’s an interesting observation, but it’s a stretch.  Dogs in the first century were not the kind of cute and faithful pets we like to keep around these days.  Dogs roamed the streets.  Dogs were scavengers and fought fiercely for scraps of food around villages.  In another situation Jesus mentions dogs in a parable to illustrate just how poor and lowly is the man Lazarus who sits…

Text: Mark 7:1-17

Wednesday, 2:38pm.  I’m sitting at Global Gallery working on the sermon.  An email comes from Gwen, back at the church office.  She’s starting to ponder the bulletin cover image to go with today’s scripture, and is apparently discussing the matter with church Accountant Ellen Kreider at the nearby desk.  The email reads: “Inquiring minds (Ellen’s and Gwen’s) want to know: who picks these lectionary verses anyway?”

The fact that I include this note at the beginning of the sermon might tell you how far along I was at that point.

The short answer to that inquiry is that back in the 80’s an ecumenical group of Christian leaders got together and created what is now the Revised Common Lectionary.  It’s organized into a three year cycle and every Sunday includes readings from the Old Testament, a Psalm, a Gospel, and a New Testament epistle.  This is Year B, which features Mark’s Gospel.  One of the beauties of the lectionary is that it enables congregations of many different persuasions to worship with the same scriptures each Sunday.  Immaculate Conception Catholic Parish, Saint James Episcopal Church, North Broadway United Methodist Church, and Clinton Heights Luther Church, all less than half a mile away from us, are most likely hearing the same gospel reading as us this morning, not to mention congregations half way around the world.  Another advantage of the lectionary, which some may consider a disadvantage, is that it challenges us to consider passages of scripture we’d just as soon skip over.

Sometimes we take the liberty to excuse ourselves from the lectionary and focus on another theme, like Christian Education Sunday in two weeks, or an extended theme or study like the month of October when we’ll look at the book of Revelation.  Other times we submit ourselves to the…

Texts: 1 Kings 3:1-10; John 6:51-58

The story in 1 Kings 3 contains a question just about everybody fantasizes about some time in life.  If you were granted one wish, what would it be?  Just thinking about it for a few seconds can get your heart rate up.  We had a birthday in our house this past week, with Lily turning eight, so that question showed up in its diminished and much more limited form: So, what do you want?  Riches and fame we could not promise, but a soccer ball, a Gryffindor robe, and a commitment to keep refinishing the attic space for a bigger bedroom this fall we can handle.

When King Solomon dreams in his sleep at Gibeon and hears the voice of Yahweh say, “Ask, what shall I give you?” he had only recently become the third king of Israel.  After coming out of slavery in Egypt, entering the Promised Land, and living under a tribal confederacy for a couple hundred years, Saul had been selected as the first king – chosen in part because he was a head taller than other men, exceedingly handsome, and from a wealthy family.  David followed Saul, a surprise choice since he was not related to Saul and since he was the youngest of eight brothers, a shepherd boy, a kind of un-Saul.  David reigned for 40 years, and, despite his flaws, was remembered as a man after God’s own heart.

The Israelite tradition up to that point had been highly skeptical of the institution of kingship – which makes sense if your experience of kingship had been slavery under Pharaoh.  Toward the end of David’s reign the dark side of power is evident as David’s sons maneuver themselves to be the next in line for the throne, various officials aligning themselves…

Text: Luke 24:13-35

I arrived at our hotel in downtown Kansas City Monday evening, the day before the start of Convention.  I headed out to roam the streets for a place to eat supper, and had one of what would be many chance encounters with a friend from another corner of the Mennonite world.  Nick had grown up in the Cincinnati congregation, where I pastored before Columbus.  He had gone to Goshen College, a Mennonite school in Indiana, and studied sign language.  He shared that there were four deaf youth who had registered for Convention, and he was here as the interpreter for the youth worship services.  It was good to see him, catch up a bit on how life was going, and get in the mode of leaving plenty of time to get from one place to another in order to have space for conversations like this.  We had arrived in Kansas City for the much anticipated once-every-two-years national Convention and I was surrounded by my people, the Mennonites.

Nick’s job of interpretation connects pretty directly to the Convention theme.  The official theme was “On the way,” a phrase taken from the Emmaus Rd story in Luke 24.  In the story, two of Jesus’ disciples are on the way from Jerusalem to the town of Emmaus.  Jesus had just been crucified and they were talking about this while they walked, when, Luke tells us, Jesus himself came near and went with them, joining them on the way.  One of the central features of the story is that these two disciples don’t recognize their fellow traveler as Jesus.  They go on and on describing to him why they’re so distraught and how this Jesus of Nazareth person had been a source of great hope for them.  The stranger finally replies by saying…