Daily Chapel, October 4th, 2016 - Tom Long preaching

9:34 Then Jesus returned from the region of Tyre and went by the way of Sidon toward the Sea of Galilee in the region of the Decapolis. They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech, and they begged him to lay his hand upon him. Jesus took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. Then looking up to heaven, he sighed, and he said to him, Ephatha, be opened. And immediately his ears were opened, and his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. Then Jesus ordered them to tell no one But the more he ordered them the more zealously they proclaimed it They were astounded beyond measure saying He has done everything well He even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak This is the word of our Lord Thanks be to God Now if the wonderful technology in this place will work, I'd like for you to hear a few seconds of something delightful.

11:03 What you just heard was an excerpt from one of the most celebrated jazz recordings of all time. The album is called This One's for Blanton. Only two musicians here, the incomparable Duke Ellington on piano and the virtuoso Ray Brown on the upright bass. It was recorded almost 50 years ago in the days of vinyl, and the original vinyl pressing is one of the most sought-after collectibles in the jazz world. What makes this recording so treasured is not simply that it's marvelous music from exemplary musicians, that it is, but also the way in which it was recorded. The recording engineers set up the recording studio like a living room or a den to create intimacy. They positioned the two musicians, Ellington and Brown, right next to each other, almost physically touching each other to maximize musical communication.

12:28 most important of all, they positioned the microphones very close to the musicians, very close. In fact, some might even say too close. Because if you listen carefully to this recording, you can hear everything. You can hear Brown grunting and groaning as he labors out his part. You can hear his hand moving up and down the neck of the bass. You can hear the heavy bass strings buzzing occasionally against the fretboard. You can hear Ellington shuffling on his piano bench. You can even hear him breathing, for goodness sake. And every now and then you can hear Ellington expel a deep sigh as he plays. What makes this recording extraordinary is that we not only hear the music, we hear the sound of the music being made. In a curious way, the Gospel of Mark is just the same way. It's almost as if the writer of the Gospel of Mark wanted to record the music of the Gospel as performed in the ministry of Jesus, and he positioned the microphones very close. Some might even say too close. Because in the Gospel of Mark, you don't get the gentle Jesus, meek, soft, and mild. We get a sweaty, muscular, embodied, guttural, and noisy Jesus.

14:03 In the Gospel of Mark, you can hear Jesus grunt and groan and sigh as he performs the labors of his ministry. In the Gospel of Mark, we not only hear the Gospel, we hear the sound of the Gospel being made. In Mark, when Jesus confronts his opponents, we not only get the confrontation, we can hear the anger rising in his throat. In the Gospel of Mark, when he engages the religious authorities, we don't only get the debate. We can hear the deep sigh of disgust or anger or whatever it is that rises in his chest. In Mark, when we go to Gethsemane, we don't just get the prayer. We get the unmistakable sound of distress and grief. And in the Gospel of Mark, when we go to the cross, Jesus does not die a quiet death. He dies with a loud cry and a violent expulsion of breath at the end. In the Gospel of Mark, we not only get the gospel, we get the sound of the gospel being made. The reason for this, I think, is that Mark wants us to know that the work that Jesus has come to do among us is hard work, back-breaking work, work that he has to put his whole being into. Because in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus is not a debonair sage who waltzes around Galilee with witty aphorisms and provocative lessons about life. In Mark, Jesus has come to do combat with the power of evil that enslaves us. In Mark, humanity is understood as captive to the powers and principalities and victim to theological Stockholm syndrome. We are enthralled by the very

16:09 powers that hold us captive. And so in Mark, Jesus has come to storm the gates of hell, to pry open the prison doors, to snap the spine of the old snake that curls around us and deprives us of faith and hope and love.

16:30 It's not an exaggeration to say, I think, that every story in the Gospel of Mark is an exorcism. Even when he's teaching and telling parables and healing, he is casting out the powers of evil. The person in our time who perhaps understood Mark's vision better than others was the radical Christian activist and pacifist William Stringfellow. Stringfellow wrote a lot about the powers and principalities as operative in our world today. In fact, he was invited to the Harvard Divinity School one time to lecture on it. He prepared a lecture on how the New Testament language of powers and principalities is not archaic language. It describes the reality that grips our most treasured institutions, our politics, our economics, our schools, and even our churches. When the dean of the business school heard that he was lecturing at the divinity school, he asked him if he would also make room in his schedule to lecture at the business school that day.

17:36 Well, he didn't have time to write another lecture, so he gave the same lecture. At the Divinity School, they poo-pooed him. We don't talk that way anymore. We've demythologized all that language. But at the Business School, they knew exactly what he was talking about. They had seen the open maw of Wall Street and the red claw of our indifferent and chaotic economy. When Stringfellow and some of his friends went to Washington to protest the war in Vietnam, his friends did it in a conventional way. They paraded in front of the White House fence with placards to stop the war, but Stringfellow did something much more radical. He went to the White House gate, took out his prayer book, and performed an exorcism of Richard Nixon.

18:30 because he knew that the war in Vietnam was not simply a matter of getting our politics right. It was a matter of being freed and liberated from the demonic power of violence and warfare. Any of us who have ever battled an addiction or loved somebody who has battled an addiction know what it means to wrestle against a power that we are not capable of breaking on our own. or think about the racism that has emerged with violent, palpable power in our society these days. It's not a matter of simply, can't we respect each other? Can't we treat each other equally? It's a matter of a demonic power that has us in its grip. We don't need to be enlightened. we need to be saved and repented.

19:26 One of my friends who's a hospital chaplain on Ash Wednesday took his lunch hour and went down the street to the Episcopal Church to an Ash Wednesday service. He came back to the hospital with a cross in ashes and oil on his forehead and he made rounds in the hospital that afternoon. He had one patient that he called a smiley face Christians. She would always say, praise the Lord, praise the Lord. Sure enough, he went into her room that afternoon. Oh, praise the Lord, the chaplain's come to see me. And as he got close to her bed, she looked up and said, you have some dirt on your forehead, and reached for a Kleenex to wipe it off. He said, no, no, it's Ash Wednesday. This is a cross in ashes and oil. She said, why would you do that? He thought for a minute and said, it's a sign that when life goes to hell, the power of God is still with me.

20:25 She reached up and took some ashes off his forehead and put them on her forehead and said, I think I need some of that. The work that Jesus has come to do among us is hard work. And that's why we not only hear in the gospel of Mark the gospel, but we also hear the sound of the gospel being made. That's why in Mark, when Jesus and the disciples are going across the Sea of Galilee and a sudden and violent storm whips up, in Mark, Jesus does not simply still the storm. That's because this is not an event on the Weather Channel. This storm is not meteorological, it's theological. This storm is the whipping and howling winds of the chaos and evil that surround us. And so Jesus does not merely still the storm, he rebukes it. Mark's word, he rebukes it.

21:20 Or to put it theologically, he denounces the hell out of it. That's why in the Gospel of Mark, when Jesus tells his disciples, we're going to Jerusalem, I'm going to the cross to die, and Peter turns and rebukes him, that word again, rebukes him, Jesus does not reach out and gently chuck Peter under the chin and say oh Peter I know the cross is so hard to understand he rebukes him right back because he knew it was not simply Peter but the voice of the old snake that had curled around him you get behind me Satan you're not on God's side. Jesus has come to do hard work among us, and we not only hear the gospel in Mark, but the sound of the gospel being made. And that takes us to our story about the day that Jesus healed a man who was deaf and who had a speech impediment. Now, one way for us to receive this story is as a typical New Testament miracle story. We have a man who has a disability, and Jesus in compassion heals the man with the disability, and it creates an astonished response of joy and amazement in the community. And if we were to receive it that way, then we could feel sorry for the man because he has a disability, and we could feel good for the man because he gets healed of his disability, and we could feel moved by the compassion of Jesus, maybe even to the point that we would want to perform works of compassion ourselves.

23:09 And if we were to receive this story that way, it wouldn't be terrible. But it wouldn't be Mark. Because in Mark, this man does not have a disability in the sense that he has something that marks himself off from the rest of us. What this man has is a deafness, just like the deafness that everybody in this room has. He doesn't have a disability. He has the human condition. And what he can't hear is not simply the sound of his neighbors or children playing in the street or people singing psalms in the synagogue. What he cannot hear is what we cannot hear. What he can't hear is the one thing that Jesus in the gospel of Mark wants us to hear. The time is now.

24:06 The kingdom is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel. What this man can't hear is the gospel. and because he can't hear the gospel, he can't speak the gospel. He is deaf in precisely the same way that we are. Take me, for example. I know what the gospel says about consumerism. What the gospel says about consumerism is that it's not merely a matter of shopping too much or having too many shiny things that I want for my possessions. what the gospel says is that consumerism is a demonic power that has me in its grip and that it whispers lies to me about what makes for abundant life I know what the gospel says about consumerism but when I'm in Best Buy There's a 65-inch ultra-high-def TV that whispers to me, I think I can give you some joy.

25:16 I know what the gospel says about consumerism. I just can't hear it. I know what the gospel says about trouble. It says that when we are in the boat and the winds are strong and the waves are high and the boat is about to sink, that standing there right with us is the word of God shouting shalom into the howling winds. I know what the gospel says about trouble, but when I think about some of my neighbors who have lost their homes because they got upside down in their mortgages, and when I worry about the bubble economically that may about to burst again, and when I think about our churches getting smaller and poorer and grayer, and when I think about my own church, those of us left beating each other over the heads because some of us can't see the image of God in people who have different sexuality, it makes me tremble.

26:18 I know what the gospel says about trouble. I just can't hear it. and I know what the gospel says about hope it says that the risen Lord in all glory stands at the end of time saying I have conquered all things do not be afraid but when I look into the face of my 95 year old father or into the face of my wife and my children my grandchildren and into the mirror I am afraid all my loves are vulnerable I know what the gospel says about hope I just can't hear it and I know what it would take for me to be able to hear the gospel it would take a miracle that is why Jesus walks up to the man who cannot hear the gospel and he does not simply pat him gently on the cheek be well, go in peace He sticks his fingers in his ears, and he sighs toward heaven.

27:24 This is hard work, and he spits, and he grabs his tongue, and he shouts into the chaos, Be opened! We all have our liturgical taste, and I hope I do not offend you with this, but my least favorite hymn is, I Come to the Garden Alone.

27:47 It has saccharine sentimental lyrics and a la-di-da tune. Other than that, it's fine. I just haven't been able to hear much gospel in it. Maybe you know the experience of Tex Sample with this hymn. He taught worship at a Methodist seminary in Kansas City, and he was teaching in class one day about what a miserable hymn this was, and he was making fun of it. He feels the same way I do, and he was prancing across the front of the classroom, pursing his lips and rolling his eyes and singing the lyrics in a sarcastic way. Everybody was laughing, or almost. When the class was over, a 35-year-old woman came up to him privately and said, Dr. Sample, please don't ever do that again. Why, he said.

28:40 She said, from the time that I was 11 years old until I got to be strong enough to push away at age 16. My father sexually molested me almost every night of my life. And after every one of those horrible experiences, I would go into the backyard, into the garden, and I would stand there and I would sing. I come to the garden alone, and the voice I hear sounding on my ear tells me I am his own. How is it possible? That a teenage girl being molested by her father could possibly hear the voice of Jesus saying, You belong body and soul to Jesus Christ your Lord, and you are treasured. It would take a miracle. And that is what we get in the power of God.

29:37 Now I think probably everybody in here has a difficult ministry. Church is declining, the world is chaotic, times are confused, and we ourselves are besieged with doubts. But we work hard, even when we are discouraged. Mark wants us to know that there is no one working harder than the Lord who walks alongside of us. every day putting fingers in our ears, grabbing our tongue, sighing to heaven, and crying, be opened, so that we might hear the gospel. And hearing it, we might with confidence go out and proclaim it. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost.