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Sermon 10.20.24 Do you "Get It"?

standrewcin


Sermong begins at 17:05. The video was interrupted during livestream, so the end of the sermon is not on the video.


The philosopher Socrates once said, “I only know that I know nothing.”

In modern parlance, we might say, “you don’t know what you don’t know.”

Now I have a question: Have you ever had somebody in your life, who no matter how many times you lay it out plainly, they just don’t get it?

I would like to begin today by apologizing to all of the people who have tried to tell me something simple that I just didn’t get.

To Melanie, of course. I don’t feel like I should or could fully elaborate on that one…

To Tyrone and Rick, they have the patience of Job … well, Job before God told him off for being impatient… you know what I mean…

To Neil, I’m sure he loves it when I say “surprise…”

To Mrs. Harris, who regularly says out loud, when I’m leaving the office, “Lord, he doesn’t mean it.”

To all of the soccer players and fans, who think I’m always wrong.

To all of the people who have honked at me while swerving around my car so they could run a red light.

The list could go on.

I think you see the point.

In the Gospel today, the disciples just don’t “get it.”

Surprise!

They don’t get Jesus, they know him. He teaches them over and over. And yet, they just can’t seem to get it.

Mark makes this point over and over, in case we don’t “get it.”

This point became even clearer to me this week as I was reminded by my friend the Rev. Herschel Wade over at Redeemer

That the last few weeks has seen a similar disconnect.

The past few weeks of gospel lessons have almost all had something to do with who has access to Jesus.

The disciples are the gatekeepers.

People call out to Jesus and they are the first ones to decide who can get close to him.

Mark continually brings up the fact that Jesus wants to be with the children, but who is not so sure?

The disciples

People want to be healed by Jesus, but who was it that had to bring them in, or check to make sure Jesus was in a healing mood?

The disciples.

Notice, who didn’t have to wait, though.

Last week we had a rich young man, he got right in.

A few weeks ago the Pharisees had questions, they got right in.

Mark seems to be showing us that the disciples continually show privilege to those whom the world has already privileged.

They only hold back those who have no money or political or religious influence. Sound familiar?

But what does Jesus do? He heals the sick, he tells them that the kingdom of God belongs to the children, and he sends the rich man away lamenting that the kingdom of God is the opposite of the power structures that made him wealthy and the privilege that helped him get straight in to see Jesus.

I wonder if there’s any lesson in there for a people whose number one priority in this season is the economy rather than ethics.

I wonder if there’s any lesson in there for a people who wring their hands over the immigration of 10’s of thousands of people escaping horrible situations,

When our ancestors had no problem forcing millions of people to cross the middle passage.

It seems like the disciples might not be the only ones who don’t “get it.”

The ultimate purpose of the gospel of Mark is to show us that we don’t “get it,” but because of Jesus it somehow comes together.

The kingdom of God is not based on our understanding, but on Jesus’ righteousness.

Jesus is our bridge to God.

For the writer of the letter to the Hebrews the ultimate symbol of this aspect of Jesus’ ministry is the high priest who makes atoning sacrifices for the people.

There are two major background pieces of knowledge that are behind the image of the high priest from the letter to the Hebrews today;

The first is that the Temple in Jesus’ time was a major center of commerce. The priests at the temple made sacrifices for individuals on a daily basis.

On the other hand, there were two main sacrificial high holidays on which only the high priest could sacrifice and those sacrifices were not for individuals, but for all of the people.

The first was the Passover, Pesach in the Spring, where we get the word pascha. A lamb was sacrificed to celebrate the Hebrew people’s escape from slavery in Egypt.

The second was in the Fall at the beginning of the Jewish year.

It’s called Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement. It was observed last week and marks the end of the High Holy Days.

It is the last day of 10 days of repentance in which it is highly important to make amends with God and your fellow humans.

At the end of the 10 days, in ancient Israel, a scapegoat would be chosen from the flock and all of the sins of the people would be ritually put into the goat.

That scapegoat would then be sent out into the desert, while the high priest would sacrifice a second goat on the altar.

In the year 70 of the Common Era, which we used to call AD, the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans.

After that destruction, it was no longer possible to do the sacrifices at the Temple and so Yom Kippur’s sacrifice became symbolic rather than literal.

Today, in the 10 days before Yom Kippur, the Jewish people are supposed to get into contact with those whom they’ve hurt and ask forgiveness.

Seeking forgiveness from others was always, I think, part of the process, which is why the letter to Hebrews tells us that the high priest was offering sacrifice for his own sins as well as those of the people.

Ultimately, what causes sin is a disconnect from God;

Times when God tries to tell us things as plainly as possible, but we just don’t “get it.”

And so we make choices and do things that illustrate our disconnect with God.

Consider Job.

In the Scriptures, he is the stand-in for all of the righteous people, who seemed to know God deeply.

He is prosperous, he does not sin, and nothing bad has ever happened to him.

In the ancient world, if you were like Job, it was because you “got it.”

You knew your God, what pleased them, what upset them. You were connected to your God and they were connected to you.

In Job’s case, it doesn’t seem like Job did anything wrong and his friends keep asking him what he did to deserve his punishment, because in their world, bad things only happen to people who do bad things.

For the whole of the story, we don’t know what Job did wrong. And that is intentional. Even at the end, that question is never resolved.

What we do see, however, in God’s response to Job contending with God about righteousness and what he deserves from God,

Is God saying, you actually don’t “get it,” there’s a disconnect.

You suffered, because to be human means that bad things can happen.

This is why the letter to the Hebrews told us last week, that Jesus, though he shared our weakness of a human body, did not sin.

It is another way of saying that Jesus was so intimately connected with God that he always “got it.”

Jesus knew God and even when he suffered because of his human body.

Like Job, Jesus contended with God. “He offered prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears,” as our Scripture says, but he did not need to be reminded of who God was or what God’s plan was.

As we enter these last few weeks of long-suffering known as election season,

As you all individually wrangle with what that means,

As each of us on a more practical level deal with our own struggles – physical or mental – that are unrelated to politics,

We may not know what God’s ultimate plan is, but we do know this.

God is our creator and our sustainer.

Jesus knows what it is like to suffer during times of political upheaval, and he knows what it is like to suffer in a body like ours.

We may not always “get” Jesus, but as the commercial says, “He gets us.”

Sometimes that is all that we can know.

And if you know that, then I’d say you “get it.”

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