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.