Pushing the Date Back

Scripture Lessons: Romans 8: 26-39 and Genesis 29: 15-28 Sermon Title: Pushing the Date Back Preached on July 26, 2020 Last Tuesday was my 40th birthday. Just before, last Sunday morning, I walked outside to find 40 pink flamingoes, a handful of metal pigs, and a cardboard cut-out of my 18-year-old-self gracing our front yard. Apparently three members of our church staff woke up early on Sunday morning to surprise me, marking my 40th birthday the best birthday I’ve ever had. It was. Truly. From you I’ve received so many cards I haven’t been able to open them all. I was serenaded by Jeffrey and Gordon Meeks on the piano and violin, as well as Van Perlberg on the accordion. I’ve been so moved by the way you have marked this milestone birthday that I haven’t even been sad as I think about how different my 18-year-old body looks from my 40-year-old one. Sara had me go outside to stand next to my 18-year-old frame. As I compare my 40-year-old body to my 18-year-old body it’s clear that my 18-year-old stomach is flatter, my 18-year-old arms are more muscular, and my 18-year-old head has much more hair. So, looking at the cardboard cutout version of my old self has been cause for important reflection this week. Not only has it made me want to join a gym and to start using Rogaine, it’s also made me wonder, if I could go back to talk with my 18-year-old self, what would I say other “Enjoy that full head of hair while you have it?” Maybe I would say that, and, more importantly, I think I would also tell the 18 year old Joe Evans not to do anything too stupid as he galivants around Marietta, GA, because in just a few years he’s going to come back to become their pastor.” Honestly, I can think of many things I’d do differently. Only today I feel strongly that the best thing to tell my 18-year-old self would be, “Don’t be too hard on yourself, because everything is teaching you something. Everyone has something to tell you. Keep going and keep learning. Don’t avoid challenges and don’t have too many regrets, because somehow God is at work in all of it.” Do you believe that? I do. Or I do most of the time. Sometimes I fall into the thinking that it would be nice to have a time machine. That it would be wonderful to have a time machine that I might go back in time to tell my old self: “on that Mexico Mission trip, don’t let Jenny Pratt take a picture of you in an old cut-up t-shirt, jean shorts, and a cowboy hat. It will come back to haunt you.” That’s maybe what we’d like to do. Meanwhile we’re being shaped by all kinds of things and all kinds of people, and just as God’s purposes are advanced by the miracles, sometimes God takes the bad things and does something good out of them. The question our Scripture Lessons for today ask is: could God be at work in all of it? Has God used any number of both miracles and tragic events to shape and change us into the people we are today? My 18-year-old-self had not yet met Sara Hernandez who would become for him one of life’s greatest miracles, but neither had he seen planes fly into the Twin Towers. Neither had he learned much about disease or despair. Today, as we look back on our lives, can we be bold to see God at work in the bad people, like Laban, or the tragic events, like being tricked by him, to internalize Paul’s conviction from the book of Romans, “that all things work together for good”? That’s a tall order. That’s a great challenge. But in a time of global pandemic, this is the question we must be asking ourselves, because if we don’t dare to see God at work today, then God’s light may shine upon us without us noticing. We may miss out on important opportunities to grow in our faith. Back to Jacob. I know he might have told his 18-year-old self to avoid Laban, but his life would have been so different if he had. Thinking about Laban and the story of Jacob and Rachel in our Second Scripture Lesson, I’m glad that Jacob and Rachel didn’t come to me for their pre-marital counseling. Can you imagine? What a mess. Some of their relationship was typical enough. It started when he saw her. Maybe it was love at first sight. Immediately, he wanted to impress her, so he rolled the stone away from the mouth of the well and watered her sheep for her. It’s the perfect beginning of a romance, and those of you who know what it is to fall in love can think back to what he did that first got your attention, or how when you saw her you would have lifted any number of stones to get her to look your way. Jacob and Rachel have their first kiss that very day. In Genesis chapter 29 Jacob kissed Rachel. Scripture tells us that when it happened Jacob “wept aloud.” It was as every first kiss should be. Then, before things go any farther Jacob goes to meet her father. Rachel’s father agrees to allow this relative stranger to marry his daughter when Jacob offers to work seven years in exchange for her hand in marriage. This is the part of the story where I can imagine Jacob wanting a time machine. He says, “I will serve you seven years for your younger daughter Rachel.” Then Laban said, “It is better that I should give her to you than that I should give her to any other man; stay with me.” Never mind that these two men are talking about this poor young woman like she’s a piece of property or an old Ford, a deal is struck. An agreement is made. Jacob is ready to do what he needs to do so he goes and does it, only we know it won’t be that easy, because it almost never is. In fact, these seven years make me think of what we were all told at the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak: “Just stay at home for three or four weeks and this thing will be over.” Do you remember them telling us that? Then three or four weeks stretched out into three and four months. Now we’re being told we’re still not getting anywhere. Likewise, at the end of seven years Jacob goes to Laban to make good on their agreement and Laban gives him Leah. There’s always something that makes a marriage hard. There’s always something that must be overcome. But never in premarital counseling have I heard a couple say: “Pastor, the thing that makes our relationship complicated is that he’s already married to my sister.” Can you imagine? Had I been doing their premarital counseling I’d ask for clarification: “So, Jacob, you were tricked into marrying her sister, by your father-in-law?” “And you didn’t realize it wasn’t Rachel until the morning after?” “And you’re still married to Leah?” What are we to say about these things? Surely, we expect better of the heroes of the Bible. Surely, we expect better out of our family members. Surely, we expect more out of life, but it only gets worse, more twisted, more complicated, for at times, God’s people, regardless of the generation, all wonder to themselves, “God, why are you doing this to me?” No doubt, like Jacob, if we had a time machine and could go back to tell our 18-year-old selves something, some of us would go back to voice a warning: “I know she caught your eye but keep walking.” “I know he seems nice enough, but don’t trust him.” “I know it’s dark in the tent, but before you do anything, make sure she’s not your sister-in-law.” Likewise, there are plenty of things I would love to do over again and there are some people I would love to have avoided, but sometimes, in dealing with difficult issues we’re actually dealing with ourselves. It’s true. It’s true that Laban tricked Jacob, but who did Jacob trick? As we read the book of Genesis and consider Jacob’s character, we remember that before he met Rachel, he had already stolen his older brother’s inheritance. Therefore, I believe we must wonder if it might be that what Jacob hates most about Laban and his tricks is what Jacob hates most within himself. What he learns then in being tricked by Laban, is how he must have made his brother feel. What he learns in getting hurt is what hurt feels like. What he learns in having to put his life on hold is that life requires, we not just get by, but grow. Today, what I realize about this time of quarantine, is that as much as I want it to be over and as much as I wish it would have never happened; that as much as I might wish that someone could go back in time to stop that virus from ever spreading, what we Christians must be bold to do is to consider that in this moment, it’s as though God has hit the reset button on this nation. That in this moment, it’s as though God has hit the reset button on our lives. Before now, few among us had time for self-reflection. Few among us had the chance to consider, not only where we’ve been but where we’re going. In this moment when it seems most of us have plenty of time, turn off the TV and put down your phone for just a moment to ask yourself: “What is God trying to teach me today?” In looking at that cardboard cutout of my 18-year-old-self, I see that despite whatever mistakes I had made or was yet to make, because of that Mexico Mission Trip I was on when the picture was taken, I was already learning that the way toward a full and abundant life was marked, not by selfishness, but service. That the way toward happiness is a movement away from self and towards the other. That life is not to be lived by tricking people as Jacob tricked Esau or as Laban tricked Jacob, but in loving my neighbor as myself, regardless of who my neighbor is. In this self-centered, defensive, ego-driven culture of ours, God is giving us a chance to choose a new path. Don’t spend so much time wishing you could go back to change what has already happened that you forfeit your chance to start making a better future today. And know that as you grow and change, as you learn and live, God is with you fulfilling His promises. Halleluiah. Amen.

Saying Goodbye to Traditions

Scripture Lessons: Psalm and Mark 7: 1-23 Sermon Title: Saying Goodbye to Traditions Preached on July 18, 2020 In the midst of so much chaos, I’ve been finding a lot of comfort in food. Have you? Last Monday for dinner we did something different. Having bought whole catfish at Kroger, I breaded them with corn meal and fried them. We’re a chicken breast family, so catfish was a little out of the ordinary. However, something made me want to mix it up, even though I’d never fried catfish before. As a kid I’d seen my grandmother do it, so I knew it could be done. We’d often spend weekends in one of the rental cabins at a place just north of Clayton called Andy’s Trout Farm. Andy and his wife Betty, who my grandmother knew, had two or three ponds filled with trout, and what we’d do is use one of their cane poles and fish. It wasn’t fishing, strictly speaking. There wasn’t much sport in it. It was like there was more trout than water in those ponds, but it was a lot of fun for me, maybe not so much the fish. According to my Dad, we were all allowed to catch just one, as we had to pay by the pound. Sometimes my grandmother would let me catch hers. Then we’d carry the caught fish in our metal buckets back to Andy or Betty who would clean them and my grandmother would fry them up in a cast iron skillet back at the cabin which we’d rented. That’s as close to a recipe that I had to go on when frying our catfish last week. So, I got out our cast iron skillet, filled it with oil, dredged them in our corn meal, and fried our whole catfish until they were perfectly brown and crispy. My grandmother’s been gone for years, but cooking this way made me think of her, which was wonderful and comforting. That’s the magic of food. My brother recently wrote about it. He reviewed a book of poetry for a literary journal. In his review he said that this poet, described food in such a way as to turn the everyday meal “into sacrament.” Maybe you know what he’s talking about. I do. The Pharisees were good about that too. The Pharisees ate in such a way that the three daily meals reminded them of who God was and who they were. They never would have rushed through supper or eaten a meal in the car on the way to a meeting. There was no McDonald’s drive-through in ancient Israel. It would have gone out of business, for these holy people stopped everything to think about when the grain had been harvested, who raised the goat, and did the cook wash her hands before she fried it? It was all a way of worshiping God with each mouthful. They were doing more than filling their bellies but were connecting to something holy. So, what Jesus said to those Pharisees and scribes must have been so completely destabilizing that they felt as though they’d been hit upside the head by a cast iron skillet. They asked him: “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” Then he said to them, “You abandon the commandments of God and hold to human tradition.” Can you believe he said that? Here’s some advice: don’t invite Jesus over for dinner unless you’re ready. He would have suggested that I grill my catfish, or worse. He’s just the kind of a person who calls us away from our unexamined lives and makes us think uncomfortable thoughts. His refusal to accept the table manners of the religious authorities here in the Gospel of Mark reminds me of this story a woman named Marcy Lay once told me. Marcy Lay directed the church choir. She is a sage of a person. Wise and faithful. After a grueling debate over the color of poinsettias to decorate the Sanctuary of our church in Tennessee: white as it had been for years or new and risqué red, she told me about how in her family at holiday dinners someone had to cut the last three inches off the ham before cooking it. Not on the big side, but on the little side where the bone might stick out. Someone had to go through the trouble of cutting three of four inches off the ham before it could be cooked in her family. That’s just what everyone did, it was the family tradition, until somebody – it was probably her sister’s boyfriend or some other interloper – asked, “That’s silly. Why are you doing that?” No one had ever asked that question. You weren’t supposed to ask, and so no one was really prepared to give an answer. Fortunately, out of the uncomfortable silence, grandma piped up: “Years ago, the biggest pan I had was about four inches too short for the ham we bought at Christmas, so I just got into the habit of cutting off that end. I don’t know why you’re still doing it. That pan you have is plenty big enough to fit the whole thing.” Is that the way with any of the traditions in your house? Do you feel like you have to cook macaroni and cheese a certain way? Is it necessary to mash the potatoes rather than whip them? Or is your pre-thanksgiving meal tradition talking about that awful man Susie brought home for Christmas who asked all those stupid questions. “Thank goodness he’s not been back.” They asked him: “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” He said to them, “You abandon the commandments of God and hold to human tradition.” Do you know how hard it is to tell the difference? Do you know how difficult it is to let go of any routine in a world like this one? By now you’ve heard that our kids won’t be going back to school. I don’t know that I’ve ever looked forward to the tradition of back to school shopping, but not doing it is breaking my heart. This week our Cece was looking through masks to wear on her first day. Lily was supposed to start at the 6th Grade Academy. I don’t like how they grow up, but this feeling of not being able to watch them go through the milestones of life that they’re supposed to go through has me all tied up. I miss the traditions. I miss our routines. I miss how normal life felt. Surely, Jesus can understand that. Surely, He’s not unsympathetic to whatever suffering we feel, regardless of how minor or how major, only in a time like this one we must always remember that Jesus doesn’t care about human traditions. He cares about the Commandments of God. He cares, not nearly so much about getting things back to normal, as moving us towards the Kingdom, so even in a time such as this one when the last thing I want to think about is changing the semblance of a routine that I’ve managed to establish, Jesus pushes us to ask the question: are we abandoning the commandments of God to hold onto human tradition? Are we still cutting off the ends of our hams even though our pan is big enough for the whole thing? Are we risking our health and the health of our neighbors for some time-honored rituals, which in this moment just don’t make any good sense? Since the Marietta Daily Journal doesn’t run on Sundays or Mondays, my wife Sara very thoughtfully gave me a Sunday subscription to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. I prefer to read my news rather than watch it on TV, and my Sundays have been disrupted enough already, so I’ve really missed my Sunday paper. I’ve been enjoying her gift. Then last Sunday there was a special note from the editor in the AJC: The first half of 2020 saw people across metro Atlanta face big challenges and do extraordinary things. Parents figured out how to do their jobs from home and guide their children’s education at the same time. Families worried about the health of their loved ones. Everyone made sacrifices with some being hit harder than others. Through all of this, many did their very best work, every day. I love this paragraph. I love it, as for one thing, it’s just important to stop and reflect on what’s happened over the past weeks and months, what we’ve done and what we’re capable of. I also believe that the AJC has it right: through all of this, many did their very best work, every day. That’s true of you. That’s true of our church. Last Sunday the most amazing thing happened. You’ve probably heard about it. Bill Fogerty turned 93 years old. Normally there would have been a party. Maybe we would have sung him happy birthday in here. Surely, we all would have shaken his hand or given him a hug to celebrate the gift from God that he is to this church. None of that could happen, but this did: his wonderful daughter Jean and her daughters sent out a message and organized a drive-by birthday party for him. And there were so many cars in this parade that we couldn’t all make it through the same traffic light. Once we got to his neighborhood we had to wait, causing a traffic jam. Then when we finally were all there, we all drove past to shout, “happy birthday” out the windows of our cars. Driving by I thought to myself, “This is what church is all about. This is what it means to be in a family of faith.” It couldn’t happen like it did before. It might not happen the way we remember for a very long time but remember this: Love is the same. We are still First Presbyterian Church. We are still, one holy people, who worship God together. We are still changing lives with faith, hope, and love – and no virus is ever going to stop that. In this strange and challenging season, when as soon as you’ve given everything you thought you could give and then are asked to sacrifice even more, do not cling so tightly to tradition, ritual, or what we’ve called normal that you go down with this temporal would which we’ve always known would fall away. Cling tightly this day, not to human tradition, but to the promises of God. For everything is changing, but God is the same, yesterday, today, and forever. Amen.

Know Thyself

Scripture Lessons: Psalm 122 and Mark 6: 1-29 Sermon Title: Know Thyself Preached on July 12, 2020 Just before sitting down to really study this passage from the Gospel of Mark I was giving our children a lecture on self-esteem. Now that I’m home all the time, they suffer through a lot of my diatribes on any number of subjects. What inspired this one was Hamilton, the Broadway sensation now available on Disney-Plus. I was so excited about it that we watched it the day it was released. It seemed like everyone was talking about it, and Sara was telling us how the creator and star, Len Manual Miranda, was interviewed the same day by Terry Gross on NPR. “What was he like?” I asked. “A little arrogant,” she said. You might say that he has a right to be. After all the soundtrack which he wrote has been listened to more than 4 billion times. In 2016 the play won the Pulitzer Price as well as 16 Tony Awards, and Len Manual Miranda not only wrote it all, but he stars in it, both singing and dancing. He’s incredible and the show is incredible. However, to Sara, the right thing to say after being interviewed by Terry Gross is, “It’s truly been an honor,” while Len Manual Miranda ended the show by saying, “thanks, bye,” which is the way you hang up the phone with a telemarketer and is not the way you leave a Terry Gross interview. So, I understood why Sara thought he was arrogant, but our kids didn’t. “What is arrogant,” our children asked. That’s when I launched into my lecture. “Arrogance is thinking too highly of yourself. Arrogant people think they’re more important or more wonderful than they actually are,” I said. Then I nuanced this lecture they weren’t paying any attention to by saying, “Thinking you’re less important or less wonderful than you actually are can be just as bad. The best thing is having a good, solid, understanding of yourself. That way when you hear criticism it doesn’t crush you, but neither do you ignore it thinking you’re already perfect and can’t improve. What life takes is not low or high self-esteem, but knowing yourself, and you two are both absolutely wonderful.” That was my speech. Maybe they didn’t hear it all, but I hope they will sooner or later, because I don’t want them to let criticism or rejection crush them, nor do I want them to go foolishly through life as the president of their own fan club, for what life demands is that we know ourselves well enough to keep going. I remember well one teenage summer several years ago. My friend Dave Elliot and I decided to launch our own lawn service. We made flyers. It was very professional. And we walked all around his neighborhood placing these flyers in everyone’s mailbox. I remember his mother suggested we not put our names on the flyer for we didn’t have the best reputation. We were mostly known as teenage vagrants, and we only got one inquiry. It was from Jim and Flora Speed. Our pastor called and asked us to watch the dog while they were out of town, which we did faithfully, I think. Regardless, this was a short-lived business venture and we never tried anything like that again. One customer didn’t seem like success, so we quit trying. You won’t make it through life that way. Those who learn from experience and persevere on the other hand will. For example: Mormon missionaries. Do you remember back when Mitt Romney was running for president and the news was so interested in Mormonism? I remember these great news stories on the religion. One person asked, “Why are Mormons so successful in business?” And the expert, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ and Latter-day Saints himself, said, “Well, if you had to leave home as a teenager and go knocking on dozens of doors a day, 99% of which were slammed in your face, you’d quickly learn what it takes to make it in this world.” In this lesson from the Gospel of Mark, Jesus tells his disciples to “get out there and keep going!” He sent them out two by two and gave them authority over the unclean spirits. He ordered them to take nothing for their journey except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts… He said to them, “Whenever you enter a house, stay there until you leave the place. If any place will not welcome you and they refuse to hear you, as you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them” and keep going. That’s what it takes. You can’t let the rejections keep you down. You keep going. You keep testifying. You keep learning and getting better. You keep doing good even if it seems like the evil in the world is going to drown it out. That’s true of Discipleship and that’s true of life. This long reading from the Gospel of Mark started with Jesus in his hometown. They didn’t listen to him either. To them, he was just the carpenter’s son, but did he allow their perception of him to diminish his self-perception? Did he rethink his mission or his ministry? Did he hear them and say to himself, “You know what, maybe I’m not really the Son of God after all?” No he didn’t. That’s not what Jesus did. That’s what we do. Jesus is different. Jesus knows he’s a prophet even if his hometown doesn’t recognize it, but Herodias won’t feel like a queen until John the Baptist is dead. Our long Second Scripture Lesson could be divided up into three acts which work together to teach us an important lesson: In Act 1 Jesus is rejected by the citizens of his hometown, and he speaks that noteworthy phrase, “Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown.” In Act 2 the twelve disciples are sent out to minister far and wide and Jesus warns them not to let those who won’t listen get them down. Then in Act 3 we see what happens to those who don’t know themselves and who can’t accept themselves just as they are, but entertain foolish dreams of grandiosity. Who live and die according to public opinion. Who make bad choices, then work to silence the critics rather than learn something. For years now we’ve been warned of the dangers of low self-esteem, but here in the Gospel of Mark we see that those with a fragile sense of self, a bloated ego that can’t handle criticism in a healthy way, is so dangerous a person as to have the head of her critic served on a platter. That’s how dangerous a person who hides from the truth is. Herodias is dangerous because she has to kill someone to be OK with herself. Jesus isn’t like that. His hometown doesn’t recognize him for what and who he is. That’s OK. He tells his followers, “don’t expect everyone to listen to you. If they don’t like what you have to say, keep going! Their reaction cannot nullify the truth which is within you.” You see, Jesus is like John the Baptist, who speaks the truth, even though it might get him killed, because if you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything. And you will. John the Baptist always tells the truth. He can’t help it. He’s like your bathroom scale. According to Jenn Hobby, resident of Cobb County and featured personality on Star 94 FM, 76% of Americans have gained at least 16 pounds during the quarantine. Today you stand on it and it tells you how much you weigh. If you don’t like what it has to say you can kill your bathroom scale, that’s what Herodias did, but killing your scale won’t change your weight. That’s how the truth works. We don’t always like it, but it’s still the truth. Likewise, I don’t want the CORONA Virus to completely derail my life. I’m tired of it, but my options are: accept the limitations and precautions and get on with it or ignore everyone who tells me what I don’t want to hear but ignoring the truth won’t keep me from getting sick. We’re living in this very uncomfortable place right now. Everything’s hard. Life is hard. Everything has changed. Life is changing. What are we going to do about it? I’ll tell you what Herodias would do, but what about Jesus? Last week our neighbors told us that every time they are on a town hall meeting where the leaders are talking about all the changes which reopening demands, they play a drinking game. Every time someone says the word: pivot, they take a drink. The constant change and uncertainty is so overwhelming. There’s no question that the reality of our life currently is getting us all down, but it can’t keep up from living and moving and growing. What the Disciples learned as they went out into the world preaching the Gospel is that they didn’t have to control every outcome. They didn’t have to convince every sinner. They didn’t have to win every soul. They didn’t have to know what was going to happen every step of the way. You know why? Because that’s God’s job. And life today requires that we acknowledge who is God and who is not. What’s required of us today is not high self-esteem so that we think we’re the Queen of Israel or low self-esteem so that the weight of the world crushes us like a bug on the soul of my shoe. What we must possess today in this strange world is enough confidence to keep going and enough humility to let God work His purpose out. We don’t have to do that for Him. We couldn’t do it even if we tried. Let us simply run the race set before us. Let us walk without growing faint. Let us trust Him with all our tomorrows. And let us rejoice in His provision while there is breath in our lungs to praise His name. For His hometown might have mistaken him for a small-town boy, but I know who he is. You know who he is. He is almighty. He is redeeming this world even as we speak. He is standing in the breach and saving this world from sin. Now and forever more. Trust in him today, my friends. For his is worthy. Amen.

The Cost of Discipleship is a Pound of Bacon

Scripture Lessons: Psalm 89: 1-4 and Mark 5: 1-20 Sermon Title: The Cost of Discipleship is a Pound of Bacon Preached on July 5, 2020 One question rises above the others after reading this Second Scripture Lesson from the Gospel of Mark: the pigs, Jesus? Did you have to kill the pigs? I love pretty much everything pig related. I love pork chops, pork BBQ, pork rinds, pork ribs, pork cracklings, pork chitlins, then all kinds of ham and any number of things cooked in pork fat. I can’t imagine a pork product that I wouldn’t eat. That may not be the most attractive quality about me, but it’s true. In fact, there was a man back in Tennessee named Ron Neil, who once introduced me as his preacher who would eat a door if it was greasy enough. So, in reading this passage from the Gospel of Mark I’m struck by the cost of discipleship. I do rejoice with the one man who was freed from his own personal hell, but I ask because we must ask: at what cost and at who’s expense? Consider the swineherds. I can understand why they asked Jesus to “leave their neighborhood” after he liberated one man while compromising everyone else’s way of life. But what this account from the Gospel of Mark does is shows us something important about our Lord which is in the fine print of all the songs we learned about him back in Sunday School. At small tables in little wooden chairs many of us were taught to sing: Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so Little ones to him belong, we are weak, but he is strong. You know that one? What they didn’t tell us when they taught us to sing it is that Jesus love me and Jesus loves you just as much. So, if you are suffering, Jesus may do something which inconveniences me. Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world. They are yellow, black, and white, they are precious in his sight, Jesus loves the little children of the world. Do you remember singing that one? I do. But consider the implications. If all are precious in his sight but some are devalued in the sight of the world, something has to change. Something has to give. That’s just the way it is, and if you haven’t ever thought too much about it before, consider the pigs. And they weren’t even slaughtered. Did you notice that? They just ran off into the ocean. There was no BBQ dinner. There was no lard rendered. No hams were smoked. No chitlins were creek washed or stump whipped (do you have any idea what that means? That’s a little Tennessee talk for you). But back to the point: just off, into the ocean they went. These pigs and their precious flesh were wasted, like so much else which love might call us to let go of. These pigs are lost to the sea like so much else which had to die so that one of God’s beloved, might breathe free. Now, let me turn my attention away from the pigs and toward the child of God. There’s a lot about him in this passage. While Mark is this very short Gospel, it’s the shortest of the four, skipping right over the whole Christmas story which would have been at the beginning, and then at the end, where the other Gospel’s let us know a little more of how the story continues, it just ends once Jesus rises from the tomb, and yet this Gospel writer describes the plight of the man who calls himself Legion as though he were not writing the cliff-notes version of Matthew’s Gospel but Charles Dickens writing Great Expectations. Listen to this level of detail. From Mark we learn that: - He lived among the tombs - No one could restrain him anymore, even with a chain - He had often been restrained with shackles and chains, but the chains he wrenched apart - The shackles he broke in pieces - No one had the strength to subdue him - Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always howling and bruising himself with stones - “My name is Legion,” he said to Jesus, “for we are many.” - Not one, but a legion of unclean spirits possessed this man. Why all these details? Because all the time we are blind to the plight of our brothers and sisters. In every society someone or some group of people ends us chained and dehumanized, living out of sight and out of mind, until someone or something opens enough eyes to the truth. From the time of Pharaoh in Egypt, we know that the Hebrew people labored under harsh taskmasters, but Pharaoh’s household didn’t have to think too much about it. Others alive today remember how their grandmother would not allow the name “Abraham Lincoln” to be spoken in her presence, because when those enslaved were freed her entire way of life had to change. Only President Lincoln once said that it was the hardship described by Harriet Beecher Stow in Uncle Tom’s Cabin which raised the conscience of the nation. What history tells us is that evil thrives when people are able to ignore the truth of their brother’s suffering. Certainly, that’s true today, as we turn a blind eye to all kinds of suffering that we’d never condone if it were happening to our sister, brother, mother or father. Take poverty for example. You know there’s poverty in Cobb County. I know it. Only a person like me doesn’t have to think too much about it until our church starts distributing free food and a line of hungry people shows up in our parking lot. 1100 pounds of milk, chicken, produce, and canned goods were given out at our church by our youth group in addition to the 2500 meals which went out that same week through the MUST Summer Lunch program. I got to be a part of it for the first time week before last. I was asking each car about how many people are in their family, because we wanted to give more food to a family of seven than a family of 4. I gave a number of tickets according to the number of family members. That was my job for the afternoon, which was the easiest job out there until it started to rain. Once it started to rain everyone else could gather under the overhang to do their jobs. I had to stand out there getting a little wet. As it was raining one woman rolled down her window. I asked her how many children were in her family. That was a hard question I had to ask because each time I heard the answer my eyes were opened to the reality of poverty right here in our neighborhood. This mother told me how many, then I gave her two tickets, and she offered me her umbrella. It makes all the difference in the world when we start to see all people as people and empathize with their suffering. Now if we do that – if we see a man in the rain as our brother, we might lose an umbrella. We might end up losing some bacon, or some statues, or some money, or some privileges, but we have to get better at recognizing all we stand to gain when we’re willing to let go of what we once thought was precious. Among other things, my grandfather taught me that. This week he died, so I’ve been thinking a lot about him. His death was a relief, in a sense, because death meant the end of this prolonged illness. He led a long, full life, but I’m also very sad. He’s always been there and now he’s not. In fact, he smoked for years and then he quit when I was little. I asked him about it once and he said, “Well, my daughter had a son and I wanted to be alive to watch him grow up.” When you think like that: What are cigarettes? What are umbrellas? What are pigs? What is privilege? What is wealth? What is anything, if in giving it up we might love someone better? When we gather around this table, we see such a profoundly different example to counter all the selfishness we’re exposed to, for here we remember the one who who gave up everything – his body and his blood –because nothing was more important to him than us. As you gather around his table today, remember all those who have given of themselves for you. Remember all those, your mother, your grandfather, certainly your Lord, who would have given up, not a pound of bacon, but a pound of their own flesh to give you life. Honor their love by following their example. Honor your faith by thinking less of yourself and more of your neighbor. And by the way: once someone asked him, “but who is my neighbor?” Let us all show the world that we know the answer. Amen.