+Points to ponder

1. Getting beyond Jesus' use of hyperbole in the Gospel reading, what is He calling us to see, to do, etc.?
2. Your heart abides where your treasure is -- cf. Matthew 6:21. Where is your heart?
3. What other scripture speaks to us about being in union with Christ?

+Sermon Transcript

Grace, mercy, and peace be unto each of you from God our Father and our Lord and King, Jesus the Christ. Amen. Let us pray: Merciful Lord, grant to Your faithful people pardon and peace; that by Your grace we may be cleansed from all our sins and serve you with a quiet mind; through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.

Imagine walking up to a church. As you approach, you see half-empty liquor bottles in the grass and a few needles on the ground. You grab your child’s hand. You do not want her to step on a bottle or accidently get stuck by a needle.

Further along, you see a Gucci bag and then the keys to a BMW. You begin to wonder, ‘just what is going on?’ As you get closer, the vision gets more puzzling. It almost looks like a horror film. There are body parts on the ground: An eye, a hand, a foot. You wonder, “What kind of a church is this? Has there been a domestic attack?”

The church you are approaching, of course, is the church of radical denial. It is otherwise known as the Church of Jesus Christ. Well, at least if you are listening to our Lord in the reading from Mark this morning. Today’s Gospel reading, especially for us Americans, is some of the hardest to hear in Mark’s Gospel.

Jesus is making an appeal. It is a passionate plea, and an ardent call to His disciples for radical self-denial. Jesus says, “[I]f your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life lame than with two feet to be thrown into hell. And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell, ‘where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.’”

Obviously, Jesus is speaking hyperbolically, and biblical scholars are quick to say Jesus is not advocating we engage in self-mutilation or amputation. I concur, Jesus is using hyperbole properly and He does not want us to maim ourselves. But I would also say that we should not use the idea of His use of ‘hyperbole’ to explain away so quickly and unthinkingly what it is that He is actually saying. Jesus’ speech is severe and dramatic for a reason.

Flannery O’Connor was an American author who knew the value of shock. She once said, “To the hard of hearing, you shout and, for the almost blind, you draw large and startling figures.” If you have read any of her short stories, you know this is what she did. And that is what Jesus is doing. He is shouting, drawing large and startling figures. He calls for amputation. He reminds us of the reality of the fires of Hell.

But why? The prophet, Jeremiah, spoke of the predilection of our hearts – “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” The Lord answers him saying, “I the Lord search the heart and test the mind …” So, Jesus knows how, by nature, we are hard of hearing.

Jesus is calling us into His body, the Church, the church of radical denial. Here is its mission statement: “Lose your life and you will find it.” Your quest for success with degrees and promotions, give it up. Your quest for peace through recreation and parties, cut it out. Your thinking, saying, doing, whatever God condemns because it is, “What you want, what you really, really want,” knock it off.

In our world today, hearing the mission statement: “Lose your life and you will find it,” is like walking up to a church surrounded by needles and Gucci bags and torn flesh. Our present culture does everything it can to accommodate the basest and ignoble desires of the human heart. We live in a world of radical fulfillment, not radical denial. “If you think it might be good for you, do it,” our culture says. “You do you.” “Be all you can be.” “Do not let others decide your life for you.” “My body. My choice.” In another discourse, Jesus warns: “For where your treasure is, there you heart will be also.” The theologian R.C.H. Lenski opined on this: “What really makes a treasure valuable is the affection of the heart. He whose treasures are on earth has his heart anchored to the earth; he whose treasures are in heaven has his heart anchored there. The earth and all its treasures must pass away; what, then, about the heart that loses all its treasures? Heaven alone abides forever; the heart whose treasures are there will never lose them.”

Many of our institutional systems, our social media, our news media, and our political systems are all changing to support the ability of individual people to determine who they are and what they want to be regardless of reality. After all, America is the country of, “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” But Jesus calls us to be the Church in America, not to be an American church.

On April 30, 1863, President Lincoln made this proclamation for a day of national fasting; and it seems to be especially trenchant today: “We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven. We have been preserved, the many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth, and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to [the] God [who] made us. It behooves us, then to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.”

Beloved, Jesus’ call to me and to you is radical. It almost sounds as crazy as asking people to amputate their limbs. You cannot “be what you want to be” and follow Jesus. Jesus has a higher calling for you, a calling which is more personal. He wants you to be what He has created you to be. He designed you and now He has come calling for you to follow Him, to be united to Him.

Jesus was there at creation. He knows what God intended His creatures to be. And Jesus has chosen to be there in the midst of the muck and the mire of our desolation. He is going ahead of us to the end of our road. He will be cut-off from the Father, cast into the depths of Hell, and suffer the punishment for our sin. But ... He bears that suffering for us so He can restore us as God’s creatures. His death is our death and, therefore, His life is our hope and our future. Come, follow Him.

Wherever you are in the journey toward self-fulfillment, come here. Come to Jesus, to His Church of radical denial. To be sure it is not easy. It is, in fact, hard. He asks you to leave your schemes and your dreams at the door. Why? Because you will be loved into life by the One who created you, who gave His life for you, and He knows what is truly fulfilling for the children of God.

He has come to transform your life, not to some cultural fad or fashion. No, your life will be transformed into something wholly other and altogether better. You will be a child of God, conformed and united to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and thus, set free to live as His child in His world. Amen.

“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.”

Sermon Study helps from David Schmitt (MDiv, Concordia Seminary, St. Louis; PhD, Washington University, St. Louis), the Gregg H. Benidt Chair of Homiletics and Literature, Professor of Practical Theology, and Chair of the Practical Department at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, MO. Found at https://www.1517.org/articles/gospel-mark-938-50-pentecost-18-series-b, accessed on September 22, 2021.