On the Edge of the Inside
Mark 1:9-15
February 18, 2024
Emmanuel Baptist Church; Mike Asbury
Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TI5R7vgQLJs
Cover Image: I Delight in You by Rev. Lisle Gwynn Garrity
Inspired by Mark 1:9-15 | Digital Painting with collage
The call to worship and prayer of confession by the Rev. Sarah Speed, A Sanctified Art LLC | sanctifiedart.org
The Lord’s Prayer is from A New Zealand Prayer Book, The Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand, and Polynesia
In the year 1181, a son was born to a wealthy Italian father, Pietro di Bernadone dei Moriconi, a silk merchant, and to a French mother, Pica di Boulemont. As a boy and young man, he lived a life of pleasure and leisure, a life newly found among the burgeoning class of entrepreneurs in Europe, with their new economic and political challenge to the landed aristocracy. This class of newly rich wanted to gain control of the political and economic systems, and they were willing to spill blood to attain it. Cities were at war with other cities, when this son, a young man named Francis, of his city of Assisi, went to war against the city Perugia. At the stern encouragement of his father Pietro, Francis went looking for the plunder and romance of war. Nonetheless, Francis had misgivings about such an accumulation of worldly power and wealth, while he witnessed the lower economic classes bear the cost of greed by the wealthy. In opposition to his father, and encouraged by his mother, he began to question his conscience about the injustice of human greed. Then on one momentous occasion, he met a suffering leper on the road, dismounted his horse and kissed this leper. His life and his heart changed forever. He knew joy for the first time in his life, was moved in his purpose, from controlling at the center of worldly affairs, to living on the “edge of the inside” of his world, to serve those with simple human needs, dropping all pretense from living in greed, shifting to meet human need. He called for repentance and belief in the Good News of God’s love. He lived in the wilderness, among beggars, as a beggar. He found others to follow in this religious life, not an endowed life as a bishop in a comfortable palace, nor as a parish priest in a cottage, nor even as a monk in a monastery, rather he lived among the ordinary ones, the “minores”, the lesser ones, the beggars, suffering in poverty, and yet finding joy from God, on the “edge of the inside” of his religion.
Living on the “edge of the inside” of his world and of his religion, Francis was becoming like John the Baptist and Jesus, in today’s gospel, two otherwise very ordinary men, separated from the center of “society”, away from the false constraints of religion, family life, neighborhoods, politics and a greedy economy. As with John and Jesus, Francis often found criticism that he was not facing “reality”, however “reality” was defined, yet they and he, lived in love and joy, while sharing the sorrows and burdens of those poor in spirit and in possessions. They each lived in wholeness, by first being broken.
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In today’s gospel, within only 7 short verses, Mark reports of three unconventional events from the life of Jesus:
1. Jesus was initiated into Judaism with an odd baptism performed by his cousin John, not within the center of religious life, but in the wilderness.
2. Jesus was comforted by angels, after wild attacks by Satan, the Accuser
3. Jesus proclaimed God’s nearness by calling to repent, as did John before prison.
AND in all this...His Father DELIGHTS!!
AGAIN AND AGAIN, HIS FATHER DELIGHTS
Therefore...Joy lives within John, Jesus and Francis!
John’s challenging message prepared us for repentance AGAIN in Christ Jesus. Today, in part due to John the Baptist, we are disciples of John’s wild eyed and wonderful cousin from Nazareth, Jesus, the son of Mary and Joseph.
These two men were told by many that they lived outside of “reality”, away from the center of power and wealth. Yet we know.... by faith .... that they lived in a true and greater reality, yes, close to being on the outside ...so they were always within REACH... of those outside of wholeness, ..They touched those in brokenness.... and... they were protected and empowered at the “edge of the inside” by God’s Holy love in Christ.
Their lives included both challenges and comfort from God.
· Where is God challenging and comforting you today?
· How do we challenge false worldly power?
· How do we comfort the broken, the sufferer?
To answer these central questions, as followers of Christ...and in his footsteps along with all those that have walked ahead of us, we must always begin at the same place....you guessed it...AT THE EDGE of the INSIDE by repenting of our own sins, not someone else’s, whether during lent ...or any day of any week.
Here’s a few ideas how we might repent:
· May we simply admit we are without the answers to life, since we don’t even know the right questions;
· May we take time to empty our mind, and listen to another, in our shared emptiness, instead of spouting a self-centered reply to someone with different life experiences;
· May we claim our absence of compassion for those less privileged, so we may then together identify with each other’s brokenness;
· May we speak truth to false power, while still coming up empty handed, recognizing that God has claimed us, we have not claimed God; God has found us, we have not found God; so that those in positions of false worldly power may know.... we are the sons and daughters of the Most-High, coming only in love, as we live and move and breathe on the “edge of the inside”, yet next to the outside, prepared to reach out and serve
· finally, I remain in prayer today with our Emmanuel Baptist family honoring the Christ centered, civil rights advocates from Georgia and Alabama and from across our nation.
My friends, God lives, not at the center of worldly power, not within possessions or shiny objects or historic buildings or even bold oratorical messages.... God lives among the poor of spirit, among the weak and lost, God lives here today, regardless of your burdens, your separation from centers of worldly power and control!
God continues to shower all of us with love and power from on high, in spite of ourselves.
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I have told you of my vows in the Order of Ecumenical Franciscans. Listen now to these words from my fellow Franciscan, Brother John Michael of Rutland, VT, explaining how and why we follow our Father Francis of Assisi and we aim to love as he did, in the footsteps of Jesus, following the footsteps of John the Baptist:
“We exist to provoke the conscience of the church and the world both through our unashamed proclamation of a Loving God and our fearless demonstration of that love to our neighbors. We are called to be so small that we could never make a difference, and so foolish that we are bound to [barely] make a dent. We are called to be hopeful in the mud puddles, joyful in the pouring rain, and grounded in God when all hell breaks loose. We are here to volunteer to be taken next. We are here to let others have the megaphone and we will skip to the margins of the crowd to put ourselves between harm and our neighbors. We are here to love each other without shame and to trust that our Spirit-Chosen family is a testimony to the powers that would splinter us into struggling households. We are here to be as wildly and unreasonably in love with God, as God already is with us.”
May this be so for us today, and every day, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit...AGAIN AND AGAIN, here, on the “edge of the inside”.