Sermon: Wittenberg Academy – Tuesday of Lent 3, 2024

5 Mar 2024

Text: Mark 9:33-50

In the name of + Jesus.  Amen.

Jesus has to teach us how to be normal again.  We are so immersed in sin that we have to be reminded not to lead children into harm.  Even animals know this, and their instincts tend toward the protection of children.  Why should Jesus even have to say this to us?  We have the Ten Commandments.  And we have the law written on our hearts.  But we also live in a debased culture, in which children are targeted for abuse in our schools and libraries – thanks to unbelievers who have hijacked our institutions.

But it isn’t only unbelievers.  For notice how the disciples are in an argument.  Jesus happens upon them and asks what they are arguing about.  “But they kept silent.”  For they were arguing “about who was the greatest.”  They knew that this was wrong and sinful.  They knew that they should “fear, love, and trust in God above all things,” and not consider themselves “the greatest.”  And when Jesus caught them, they were embarrassed, and became silent.

For they too had forgotten how to be normal.  Sin does that to us.  It makes us abnormal and ugly.  It causes us to deviate from the beautiful norm that God established in His creation.  Sin makes us elevate ourselves rather than humble ourselves.  Sin turns men into predators instead of protectors.  Sin transforms women into ugly imitators of the masculine instead of the beautiful nurturers that God created them to be. 

Sin also makes us think in terms of human institutions instead of the kingdom.  John reports to Jesus that there is someone out there casting out demons in the name of Jesus, but this man is not part of their bureaucratic structure.  And so they tried to use force to prevent him.  They were replacing the church with a bureaucracy, the kingdom with just one more thing of human origin.  They were thinking of themselves as a worldly organization instead of the body of Christ. 

And again, Jesus has to remind them to be normal.

For since the fall in Eden, the abnormal has been normalized.  We think death is normal.  We think controlling and lording over other people is normal.  We think putting ourselves on a pedestal is normal.  But this is all abnormal, dear friends, abnormal and destructive.  Jesus has not come to restate the law, but to comply with it, and to give us His righteousness.  He comes not to scold, but to correct – in the true sense of the word.  Jesus has come to draw us back into the bell curve of normalcy, to bring us into a right relationship to God and to one another, to restore the good and normal and beautiful kingdom of His reign.

His metaphor of repentance as the destruction of the body in order to enter the kingdom of God is, for Him, not a metaphor.  For Jesus will suffer worse than a gouged eye or an amputated hand on the cross.  He will suffer and die for our sake, and will rise again to make resurrection normal for all of us.  And by His wounds, we are healed.  By confessing Him as the greatest, we are free to be what God created us to be in the kingdom.  We can be normal and beautiful and immortal again.  And instead of being shamefully silent, we will sing praises to Him in shameless glory according to the normalcy of His redeemed creation!

Amen.

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.