Sunday 22nd September – Special – Pastor Adrian Kitson

I notice the great Bruce McAvaney is back on the AFL footy coverage for the finals. For many, Bruce has been the prime sporting event commentator for decades. His voice has called those big sporting moments from Kathy Freeman at 2000 Olympics to the winner of the Melbourne Cup to AFL games, week after week for years …

Like all good commentators, Bruce had his quirky calls. One of his famous words when describing a brilliant bit of football play is ‘Special’: “Cyril takes a ‘special’!

Well, today we are going to be hearing about who is special in this new community of Jesus. It is very different to who is special everywhere else.

In the hurly-burly of life walking with Jesus up hill and down dale, the Twelve often don’t come off too well. We see them struggling to know what to make of Jesus’ way, especially when he keeps on talking about ‘being handed over’ to dark forces and ‘dying and then rising’, as he does here for the second time in Mark’s account.

But three of them at least, recently had that transfiguration mountaintop experience as they were included in a gathering of the Hall of Famers – Elijah, Moses, and now, Messiah Jesus…. Peter, James and John were the privileged three who got to that greatness (Mark 9:2-10).

But, from mountain top back to where they started. They are walking somewhere close to the home base at Peter’s house in lake-side Capernaum. It is here that Jesus talks about being ‘handed over’ to the Jewish authorities and dying.

As they walk along together toward Capernaum itself, we hear of something they think Jesus cannot hear.

There is a dispute among the ranks. It is about who will be the most special; the greatest in this new future community Jesus is talking about.

I wonder if two things contribute to this competitiveness; this dispute about who is the greatest in this new community.

1. Fear of mission out: Only three out of the Twelve were allowed to have that experience with the greats on the transfiguration mountain and,
2. Not hearing him: Their inability to understand what is being taught to them in all that is happening to them.

I think that is us.

When we see other people doing well or receiving good things from God when we ourselves believe we are not; when we fear we are missing out on something great, and when we struggle to understand what we are supposed to be learning from God in the many things going on around us that are often quite perplexing, we go to what we know. We default to what comes naturally to this wounded heart of ours. We go to firming up status and confirming our greatness among others.

Life on planet earth with all the other human beings is founded on status, winning, being the best, getting the most, surviving the longest, performing well for reward, achieving things to get things, trying to keep it all together, looking as good as you can, avoiding the wrong people and their places, and etc etc….

We see here that despite these followers being eye-witnesses to Jesus’ real-life words and activities, they still gravitate to the possibility for power and recognition as the benefit of following Jesus.

But Jesus inverts the whole show.

Status, gaining, winning, being at our best, having the power over things and people is not the DNA of this new community. Here greatness; being special, is founded on being served, being welcomed and serving and welcoming people.

And here comes the object lesson.

This is against their flow.

In the surrounding culture of these disciples, there was no middle class. Most of the greatness of status and wealth was concentrated in the hands of a few at the top. For those ‘great ones’, honour was everything. The rich only wanted to associate with the rich and would harshly devalue and dismiss everyone else – to keep their place.

In ‘Roman think’, it was completely fine and even expected that you boast of your achievements, be they in business, in the military, in the arts. It was not uncommon to inscribe all your great achievements on your front fence or gate to let everyone know just how great you are!

And children were of no status. They were down at the bottom with women and slaves.

I am sure there is a bit of ‘Rome’ about us. I read a story about when the Apple Watch was released some years back. You could buy it in aluminium, stainless steel, or gold versions. Remember, this is a piece of technology that would be obsolete in 2 or 3 years. The only conceivable need for a $10,000 gold version of the watch would have been status; to proclaim to the world that money can be spent with no correlation to value.

With the hugging of a little child and placing that little one on his knee Jesus shows them his community is one where there is no need to have a gold Apple watch! There is no need to perform well to gain one’s greatness in world terms. In this new community of the Servant King, serving, welcoming, giving, tending the weak, the vulnerable, the different is ‘king’.

I read this little summary:

The quest for rank and status is fired by the desire for power over others and by deep-seated human need to be somebody special. Jesus announces that in God’s kingdom there will be no place for domination over other people, and the desire the be somebody special will be fully satisfied when all treat others as special”.

1. We have heard this.

Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenon, many a great philosopher: modern and ancient, like this vision of community. But we just don’t seem to be able to produce it. So how will it come and by who and how can we live this way with any certainty?

Apparently, by receiving that powerless child of no status – by welcoming any weak and different or even despised person.

Who is that? We could think of plenty of kinds of people who might fit the bill. But, what about the person speaking these very words. Isn’t it him too?

He will be all that is weak and ugly and unwanted and despised. He will be an embarrassment, a cursed one, a shamed one for all the world to see in just a little while for these struggling followers.

Welcoming his shame, his defeat, his dying leads to welcoming his rising, his victory, his power over all that is dark and corrupt and wrong in you and in this world he still loves.

Friends, when it dawns on you that this Jesus has gone that low to bring you that high then you begin to lose the need to be special in the world’s terms. You are just happy to be special in Jesus’ terms.

As you know what he did on that cross and how he burst out of that grave for you, you can see that you are the weak, vulnerable and often unwanted one; you are that child on his knee. You are the one he hugged when you were really bad, really lost, really selfish. Then you know you are not scared of missing out on anything good and that you are really ‘hearing’ Jesus.

Especially when a disease hits, age catches up with you, you lose something or someone precious, you make a big mistake and everybody knows….. Then you really ‘get’ Jesus, I think.

When you know you are safe on that knee and in those arms of welcome, you can do what he suggests here; welcome all the weak, vulnerable, lost, needy or even ‘bad’ people like he welcomes you.

All of a sudden, how much you have, what you are achieving, how well known you are, what kind of success you have earned, where you have travelled, how much you have seen, how well the kids are doing and etc aren’t the main thing. You are just glad you are on that knee and in his embrace.

Knowing his arms wide open on that cross embracing you makes the shift; the transforming miracle a person needs to be truly free to drop the power, the status, the need to be a cut above the rest or even just valued as a person by others because you trust that you are embrace and completely affirmed, accepted, and belong with his community; that you are forever that child on that knee; embrace by this All powerful Servant Christ, who is in all and over all.

So, no need to withhold serving for fear that the person is too bad, or too different or too wrong. We were wrong and different and bad and here we are.

No need to search and search and search for someone to tell me I am special. The Special One has called you by your name and you are his with all the rest of us in this King’s Servant kingdom.

Welcome this Servant King in his powerless, different, vulnerable one, rich or poor, male or female, slave or free. In doing so you welcome the Father of all creation and enjoy freedom enough to serve them all.

Practicing injustice:

Godly morals gone:

Sounds like a running commentary on what can and does appear within our own our community!

A ‘religious’ life attached to the outward things of faith more than the relationship with our God of this new covenant signed in Jesus’ blood.

People partnering with how the world attempts ‘fix’ its problems through alliances to sure up control, political manoeuvring, more technological mastery, more grabbing for self-help and human ideas of life than living under God’s word of life gifted by his Spirit to anyone who would listen.

Moral failure? Oh boy! We know what that is in the community and in the church so often too!

It is hard to be confident in our faith and our life and church and future. I guess it always has been that way for Christians of all times. But in these times, both as a Western democracy and a little Lutheran Community in this country, the times seems tense and particularly unsettled.

Recently I was listening to a podcast that was an interview with probably one of the prime New Testament scholars of our time – NT Wright. He was saying that he does not think that the world situation has been so tense or unsure since those days of the Cuban missile crisis in the 60’s.

What is Isaiah saying to a people under the pump? They have lost it all. The country has been invaded, the capital city destroyed, most of the nation have been dragged off to another country …

What can help us in less frightening times? Where do we rest? What kind of God do we have and where is he at work in me and us in all we face?

Hear him speak to your anxious weary of bad news heart now:

That is the Suffering Servant’s goal for you – to awaken you each day and give you a word that encourages your weary body mid and spirit. the weary, not demands more of the weary. He awakens you and gets you into that posture of learning, being a follower; a disciple – learning his words of life…. His intention through it all is to enable you to be awake and listening to him.

Yes, he tells the ugly truth of you and us, but for the goal of encouraging not damaging you – for gifting you with good not demanding you be good all by yourself.

What is his good word?

Whatever happens in life, world and church, we people of grace by faith in this Suffering Servant can trust that ‘we will never be put to shame’ like he fully was on that cross. Yes, we may face disparaging words, hurtful words, even persecutions but even these are not things of shame for those who are in Christ – alive in his grace and love and under his authority being taught by his Word.

This means that we do not have to act in fear or revenge or competitiveness and control. We are already free from shame because he has taken our shame as he forgives us again and again be his word of Absolution and his wonderful healing meal of holiness we share.

There is no angry or dark or disruptive place that this Suffering Servant is not in. In any place you have a protector from all evil accusation and all the evil one’s evil accusations that have the goal of trying to shame you. You will never be put to shame because you have a constant protector who is close.

That last line is important. Accusations will wear thin like an old T-Shirt eventually wears out.

The Suffering Servant has taken the accusations for you into his own body as they hurled insults at him and pulled out his beard. The grace of Jesus will outlast the barbs of Satan.

So friends, I hear three good news things from Jesus, this Suffering Servant today.

He longs to give you daily words that encourage your weary soul. Today is another one of those encouraging words for your spirit.

Whatever happens in life and church, you have a protector of flaming arrows of accusation, and an advocate that will overcome them all with wonderful grace. You do not need to be anxious about being shamed. You have been named and claimed by this Servant Christ.

And as a result you can live free of revenge or controlling or relying on human things to fix things …

No, Paul says

And that is the hope.

Can you see?

This is the life God always longed for his people to enjoy and do. Living awake and listening each day is how we be the light we are always meant to be, in whatever conflict, difference, or sense of insecurity about world; church, relationships or self.

Is your confidence in Him rising?

We have a future and it is him.

Familiar words:

And that is the hope.

Can you see?

This is the life God always longed for his people to enjoy and do. Living awake and listening each day is how we be the light we are always meant to be, in whatever conflict, difference, or sense of insecurity about world; church, relationships or self.

Is your confidence in Him rising?

We have a future and it is him.

Familiar words:

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