the journey is the reward a sermon on mark 8 27-38

7/28/2019 The Journey is the Reward a Sermon on Mark 8 27-38.

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The Journey Is the Reward

A Sermon on Mark 8: 27-38

Richard A. Wing

W ith great pleasure I dedicate this sermon to the faithful work overthe long haul of Don and Marge Reisinger. Marge is a brightstar shining to family and friends and to all whose pleasure it isto know her. Don knows that his ability to do all he has done has been bythe power of her grace, her love and her commitment to the work he has

done.

No one has referred to his work as a journey more than Don. He has beenfaithful in naming what is happening "at this point in time" and knowingthat to be fully aware and present in the moment is by far the greatest giftrather than the dream of a destination. Implicit in the life of Jesus, andwritten in the Tao before Jesus, are the words of the title of this sermon:The Journey is the Reward.

And, Dr. Don, our faithful friend and companion on the path, we salute youas the most worthy and wonderful of travelers with us. What an embarrassment of riches has been ours to travel with you until "this point in time" andto know that there are many more points of grace to be known in your life.Our lives have been graced because of you, companion and friend, Don. At"this point in time" and at the place of destination, you will never be

forgotten in our hearts and lives. Peace to you.

Introduction

Jesus is on a journey with careless companions.

How do I know they were careless? Tony Camplo said they must havebeen because they were always "mending their torn nets." When Jesus said,


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The first miracle in the Gospel of Mark is that Jesus commanded theseuneducated fishermen to follow, and they did. Hold that scene in yourmemory because you will see that moment as the last these disciples got aninstruction right. After that they were in the clouds most of the time andclueless about what Jesus was about. Their proximity to Jesus did notautomatically bring clarity.

If Jesus went the way of full disclosure he should have said, "Follow me

and I will leave you breathless from the many places I demand you go withme." Scripture records Jesus saying something or doing something andthen "immediately" Jesus goes to the next place, disappears or is seekingquiet. Jesus is always moving.

On the sea one night, Jesus is strolling by the disciples' boat. "Wait," theysay, "Hey, where are you going?" Jesus simply passes them by.

The end comes. Jesus is dead. A woman is at the tomb. "Jesus? Sorry,you just missed him. He is going before you into Galilee. Hurry, catch upwith him." Jesus burst out of the tomb like an open field runner off to somenew mysterious destination. The disciples are breathless again. In life andafter death, Jesus leaves his followers breathless and clueless.

One time Jesus reportedly said, "You know the way I am going." I can see

Thomas shaking his head "no" in exasperation and saying, "Jesus, we do NOT know where you are going and where your journey will take us."

In time the disciples conclude that they know little about the place whereJesus is going, but they trust the spirit and heart of the one who preparesthat place, and that finally is all they need to know.

Enter with me into what the journey after the life of Jesus demanded of thedisciples and of us.


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The Journey Is the Reward 55

not Moses could pay attention to something for more than a few minutes.The question with Moses and the challenge of Jesus is this: can you beholda miracle without falling asleep. There is another world right here withinthis one, which comes into view when we pay attention.

Recently I was out on a lake in a nearby state on a pontoon boat withfriends I have known over the past twenty years. The day was calm. Thesun was bright. Some were sunning, some were fishing and for a moment

everyone was quiet. In that quietness, for some reason they all were transformed before my eyes. I looked at each of them. I started numbering allthe burdens and losses that we have shared together. I remembered thefuneral for this woman's husband when he was thirty-six; I remember thefaces of three children now young women as I announced the death of theirfather; I remember the funeral for that couple's daughter who was twenty-two; I remembered the funeral for this young man's mother and discoveredthat he had met his father only once and still suffered from that; I looked atyoung lives trying to make relationships work. Right before me I wasaware of the fact that our losses are the common thread that bind our heartsand lives. Such awareness should make us want to place a sign over thedoor of every church: "Be kind to one another because everyone in this

/ place is carrying something heavy." I saw clearly this truth which Jesusidentified with the kingdom: There is another world right here within thisone, which comes into view when we pay attention.

Rabbi Kushner tells the story of a man who went to his doctor's office thatwas just across the street from the psychiatric hospital. One day, as he hadregularly done for a few years, he walked down the street to his car in frontof the hospital when he heard blood-chilling screams from the buildingrooftop. He mentioned that fact to his doctor. "You mean you just nowheard it?" asked the doctor. "After all these years?" In fact, the screamershad been screaming every day he came to therapy for years. From that dayon he could hear the screams and concluded: "The screams are all aroundus waiting for our ears and eyes and hands " Awareness is the difference


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The one with whom we journey seeks to get us to see that God's voice isalways speaking. God is always with us. And with our penchant desire forMuzak, we drown out the voice of God. God, in God's persistent and consistent pursuit of our lives turns on the Dolby switch occasionally andeliminates the hiss of our world and lets us hear his voice clearly. God isalways speaking and mostly we are unaware.

The journey demands awareness. And

II. The Journey Gives Relationship

I remember the day a young man called me in crisis. I had done his wedding the year previously and he told me there was a crisis. He announcedin my office, "I don't feel the same way about her as I did the day we gotmarried." I said, "Congratulations, that is where your marriage begins. Ihope I didn't fail to tell you that marriage begins the moment romantic loveends." He was silent. They got counseling. They are doing well.

Most of the time when I buy something I first read the manual, or drive theproduct around the block before buying it. With marriage you do the opposite. You buy into it without knowing what you are getting and withoutknowing where you are going. I had someone come to me recently whodeclared that you can not really know someone until after you have lived

with them for twenty years.

Promises of marriage and life-long commitment are made in the churchprecisely because you don't know where they will take you, which is justlike the disciples who left their torn nets to run breathlessly after one whocould not be contained by convention nor bought by flattery.

Albert Schweitzer described the not-knowingness of where we are going orwho it is we go with when he said, "Jesus comes to us as one unknown,without a name, as of old, by the lakeside, He came to those men who knew


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mystery, they shall learn in their own experience Who He is."

The journey promised by Jesus takes you away from nothing in this life andcomes with a promise that Jesus will be with you through it all. That companionship makes all the difference. Robert Capon said, "Jesus comes tous in the brokenness of our health; in the shipwreck of our family lives, inthe loss of all possible peace of mind, even in the very thick of our poorchoices. Jesus saves us in our disasters, noi from them ... He meets us all

in our endless and inescapable (losses)."

Often people say that God is not near. Many of those people need to beasked, "And guess who moved?" Tony Camplo tells about the couple thatwas married for 40 years. They were driving down the street and saw ayoung couple sitting close to each other in a car with her arm around theguy driving. The woman began to complain. "Remember when we werelike that. Whatever happened?" The man said, "Guess who moved?"

Jacob complained of the absence of God. In the night came a dream and awrestling with God. In the aftermath Jacob said, "God was in this place (theplace where I complained of God's absence), and I, I did not know it." Heconcludes that if God was in the very place of his complaint of God'sabsence, then God must surely be present in many other places that I havenot found him. Jacob leaves limping and blessed because he has the gift of

awareness and the knowledge that God is present in the very places weclaim God is not.

And now one last aspect of the journey,

III. The Journey Moves from Abstract to Specific

You are right in asking, "When are we going to go beyond all this preludeto the text itself?" Let us wait no longer. The central question of our textmoves from the abstract to the specific


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outside groups use the church we could get sued if someone falls on the walk." Really? "They say you can't grow a church unless you are fundamentalist." Really?

Anytime we allow the abstract to dominate the way we follow Jesus then we can spend all our time dominated by fear and marked with inaction. ButJesus goes to the weightier question when he says, "But who do you say thatI am?" Be very careful how you answer that question and what that

question might demand of your life.

As . T. Wright said, when you answer that question, suddenly your journey can neither be private nor self-centered.... To continue the journey means to join in with God's work of healing and love in the world ... those

who find themselves drawn into the love of this God must themselves joinin God's work of reconciliation.

Recently I revisited the life and work of Albert Schweitzer. He wrote thefirst long and scholarly work on the life of Jesus in the 20th Century. Thenhe pushed the abstract, long, scholarly work aside and let the call of Jesus

become specific in his life. The specific text that transformed his life wasthis: "Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong tohim." When the general call of Jesus became specific in his life, he lefteverything to serve the poorest of the poor in Africa.

I remember when Rudy joined the church and asked to see me in my office.He came to stay "just a moment." He told me of an artificial limb that he

wore. He told me of a serious case of diabetes that he had. He told me of the temptation to feel sorry for himself. He told me that he decided not tolet the general malaise of his diabetes rule him. He told me that he decidedto use his illness to help others. "I go to hospitals regularly and giveencouragement to those who are going to have the same operation that I

had." Why? Because the love of Christ leaves him no choice but to love,serve and encourage those who are walking the same path with a slight


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Just before he died, Rudy told me that death would be for him a victory.Rudy belonged to Christ. Rudy had the gift of awareness, the knowledgeof who traveled with him and the joy of taking the gospel's general demandand making it specific in his life.

Conclusion

People who followed Jesus for a reward were mistaken. What they got was

a journey. The Tao says, "The journey is the reward." And in looking back on what Jesus calls us to on the journey, we realize that the journey is thereward. We realize, looking back, we were never alone on the journey. Werealize, looking back, that we were made new when we stopped makinggeneralizations out of God's call and let God's call become specific.

In the late 1930's in Munich, under the rule of Nazis, there was a youngJewish girl by the name of Sussie riding on a bus home from work sittingnext to a total stranger. Suddenly, the bus was called to a halt. The SSsoldiers boarded and started examining the documents of the people on thebus. Jews >vere being told to leave the bus and get into the truck around thecorner. Sussie watched the soldiers come closer and she began to cry. Theman next to her asked why. She said she didn't have the papers he had andthat she was Jewish and would be taken.

Suddenly, the man stood up and exploded. "You stupid woman," he yelled."I can't stand being near you!" The SS men asked what the yelling wasabout. The man, still swearing, said angrily, "My wife has forgotten herpapers again! I'm so fed up. She always does this!" The soldiers laughedand left.

Sussie never saw the man again, the one who saved her life. She neverknew his name.

Once there was a Christian man riding on a bus next to a stranger Up to


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May God help us to translate the general notions of faith into specific actionfor good to any human face that needs us and receives us. In so doing, wewill realize one day that the journey of doing specific goodness was thereward we have looked for in all the wrong places until now. Amen.


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the journey is the reward a sermon on mark 8 27-38

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