Many of you know that brother is a missionary in China.  He and his wife are committed to the work of spreading the gospel in a country that is quite resistant to the faith.  When I tell people what my brother does, most people respond, “Oh, your parents must be so proud!  A priest and missionary in the family!”  And my parents are quite proud of my brother and the call that he is fulfilling.  But in the darkest, most judgmental and ego-centric places of my heart, I sometimes cringe when I hear the comparison between my brother and me.  I cringe because my brother and I have very different experiences of and ideas about Christianity and theology.  We disagree about many issues – gender roles, human sexuality, and Biblical interpretation.  We have had heated debates over the years and times of silence.  Ultimately we have agreed to disagree and we try to respect each other despite these differences.  But when I tell people that my brother is a missionary, I have secretly wanted to explain, “…but not our kind of missionary.  Not the kind of mission work that we do.”

We all do this kind of boundary drawing.  For those of us who are opposed to the “Religious Right,” we often find ourselves explaining at parties how we are Christian, “but not that kind of Christian.”  For those of us worried about the liberal bent of the Episcopal Church, we find ourselves wondering how we can save the Church from the presumptuous progressives.  Neither side is wrong.  As adults, we have been on a faith journey, and along the way, we have developed a relationship with God and an understanding of who Jesus is to us.  Our relationship with God is vital to our lives.  So when someone else claims to also have a vital relationship with God, but that relationship is based on things that we disagree with or cannot understand, our oppositional reactions are only natural.  When we claim to believe in something, there are natural and reasonable boundaries around what we do not believe.  We have staked our faith in an experience of God – in our case – in the Episcopal Church’s understanding of God.  Boundaries about what is or is not an appropriate expression of faith are important.

Defining the boundaries is exactly what the disciples are trying to do in our gospel lesson today from Mark.  Jesus has been teaching the people and the disciples, trying to illuminate the new revelation of God through Jesus Christ.  Jesus has been especially schooling the disciples, since they will need to spread the faith after his death.  There are a lot of false teachings around, and many people trying to claim the same healing powers that only Jesus has.  So, when the disciples hear that a man is casting out demons in Jesus’ name – essentially claiming that his healing is endorsed by Jesus – the disciples shut him down.  “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name and tried to stop him, because he was not following us,” they say.  You hear the boundaries forming.  He was not following us.  We are the true disciples, and we are the ones mentoring under Jesus.  Only we can heal in Jesus’ name.  We are in.  He is out.

But Jesus sees this situation very differently.  “Do not stop him…Whoever is not against us is for us.”  As one bishop explains, what Jesus knows that the disciples do not is that, “Jesus, the very incarnation of God’s power and presence, refuse[s] to live by the divisions and barriers of his time.  He challenge[s] the practice of confining God’s redemptive and transforming action to one’s own race, one’s own religious institution, one’s own political party.  When the disciples want exclusive claim to God’s reign, he challenge[s] them to see God’s presence and power manifested in those who [are] not members of their group.”[i]  Jesus is unwilling to draw the boundaries that the disciples want.

But, before they can even understand why Jesus is eliminating boundaries, Jesus turns the tables and tells them not to worry about others, but worry about themselves.  Jesus says, “If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea.”  In other words, if the disciples get in the way of others’ faith – even if that faith does not follow the rules, does not look like what faith in Jesus should, or seems to be uninformed – if the disciples get in the way, they would be better off dead.  Yes, that is how serious this is.  Jesus basically explains that he is more worried about the disciples messing up someone else’s faith than he is worried about someone who may be healing in his name without actually understanding everything about Jesus.  Quite bluntly, Jesus tells the disciples to get out of the way.  Worry about yourselves.  Worry about your behavior as a disciple, not everyone else around you.  The disciples’ faith will define how others believe, and if the disciples are in the way with all this who-is-in-and-who-is-out business, they would be better off dead.

The words are harsh from Jesus, but there is a nugget of grace for the disciples.  Jesus says, “…no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me.”  In other words, invoking the name of Jesus – whether one knows the same Jesus the disciples know, whether one understands Jesus fully, whether one is inside or outside of whatever boundaries have been drawn – the name of Jesus has power.[ii]  Jesus explains that when his name is invoked, a person changes.  Jesus’ name does something in the person that we cannot understand or control.  Jesus’ name has a power that is bigger than the disciples and bigger than any rules, fences, or boundaries the disciples try to construct.

This invitation into the openness of God’s grace is for us to realize today.  Many of you know that I love gospel music.  When I used to commute to church on Sundays, I would turn on the local gospel station and blare the music loudly – partially because that was some of the most spirited music I would hear because my parish played mostly traditional Anglican choral music.  The tricky thing about gospel music is that gospel music can do two contrasting things:  the theology of gospel music is sometimes not at all in line with Anglican theology, especially as that theology relates to money, sin, or suffering.  However, gospel music has a way of reaching into your gut and pulling at those very deep and dark things that we struggle with, and shining Christ’s light into those dark places.  There was many a Sunday when I would find myself crying on the way to church because a song spoke such deep truth to me.

This is what Jesus is trying to show all of us today.  If I draw a box around acceptable theology, I could never enjoy about half of the gospel music that I like.  But Jesus reminds me today, that anyone who invokes his name can be used for good.  That includes my brother and the hundreds of people with whom he is spreading the Good News, and that includes my own ministry, despite my ego-centric, judgmental, presumptuous self.  God is using both of us for good.  Our invitation today is to see others with this same lens of God’s grace.  When we stop drawing boxes around acceptable uses of Christ’s name, we may find ourselves in heated, but illuminating discussions about the way God is moving in our lives.  When we stop creating boundaries around acceptable experiences of Jesus, we may find that others teach us something about the Jesus of whom we thought we had full knowledge and mastery.  When we stop drawing lines around proper invocations of Christ’s name, we may find that the people who walk through St. Margaret’s doors are different from us but make our lives much richer.  As one professor explained, “every time you draw a line between who’s in and who’s out, you’ll find Jesus on the other side.”[iii]  Jesus invites us today to loosen those boundaries and let the power of his name not only work through others, but also work through us.  We may be surprised at the ways in which our open minds allow our hearts to be open to the movement of the Holy Spirit here at St. Margaret’s.  Amen.

This week has been a funny week for scripture.  While reading the daily office on Wednesday, I came across Psalm 72.  The psalm starts, “Give the king your justice, O God, and your righteousness to a king’s son.  May he judge your people with righteousness, and your poor with justice.  May he defend the cause of the poor of the people, give deliverance to the needy, and crush the oppressor.”  “Yes,” I thought, “This is the president we need.  After all this debate about how we feel about the poor, this is the kind of president I want.”  Then I kept reading.  The more I read about this noble king, the more the king sounded like Jesus.  Finally the truth seeped through – this year, as I am considering my choice for President, I have not been looking for an actual person.  I have been looking for a savior; and that is not fair to any human being.  Any person running for president is going to be flawed.  And we already have a Savior – we do not need another one.

Then I read our Old Testament lesson for today: the “capable woman” from Proverbs.  I spent some time with this text when I was writing my thesis in seminary, so I was drawn to the familiar text.  But the more I read about this woman, the more inadequate I felt.  She makes clothes, rises before dawn to feed her family, manages a staff, purchases a field, and plants a vineyard by herself.  She in an entrepreneur, selling her wares for good money.  She cares for the poor, and is a wise teacher.  She does all this and is happy.  As a priest, mother of one, and a wife, I feel woefully inadequate next to the capable woman.  In fact, in Hebrew, the word to describe her is not really “capable” – the word, hayil, is a word that means much more than capable.  Hayil is primarily used in the Old Testament to describe men of great power, valor, and strength.  Hayil is a term for powerful warriors.  In fact, this Proverbs woman and Ruth are the only women in the Old Testament to earn the title normally reserved for men.  The Proverbs woman is not just capable; she is a woman of strength and power.  She is a superwoman.

The challenge with these two images – the righteous king and the powerful woman – is that neither of these labels feels attainable.  For women, the Proverbs woman of power is especially loaded.  Many of us long to be that woman of hayil.  We want to be a woman who can do everything – work outside the home, manage our finances, care for a home and family, maintain a healthy relationship with God, have power and honor in our lives.  This is the challenge of the modern woman – society is opening doors for us to do everything – to work, to raise a family, to be successful.  But the reality is that we either kill ourselves trying to do everything, or we feel horribly guilty for our many failures.  Unlike celebrities, who seem to manage family, fame, and face with ease, we feel overwhelmed and woefully inadequate.  In fact, as I was pondering preaching this text this week, I stumbled across a quote from one seminary professor.  She writes, “Many of you will conclude this text is too much a minefield and steer clear, with good reason.”[i]

Of course, today is not just a sermon for the women in our community.  Men often feel the same sense of being overwhelmed by trying to do everything.  There is often pressure to be financially stable, and if you have a family, to provide for them.  There is now an expectation that men play a role in the rearing of children and doing housework, being involved in the community, and caring for the upkeep of your home.  As I have read parenting magazines these last three years, I have seen story after story of men trying to navigate the modern family’s expectations of playing both traditional and nontraditional male roles.  And for the two men running for President, the expectations are almost criminal; we want perfection – a president who is a savior, not a flawed human being just trying to balance life.

So what do we make of this woman of hayil in Proverbs today?  Like the King in Psalm 72, I wonder if the woman in Proverbs is perhaps not a particular human, but an ideal.  All of the practices of the woman of strength are practices that we should strive to embody – we are to be industrious, using the talents that God has given us for the good of ourselves and others.  We are to work hard and to care for the poor and needy.  We are to use our words wisely, and shape the next generation to love kindness and walk humbly with God.  And most of all, we are to fear the Lord.  Fear in this sense is not the kind of fear that cowers from God, but that holds the Lord in awe, marveling at the majesty of God, rooting our lives in that sense of wonder, gratitude, and reverent humility before the Creator.[ii]

The good news is that we do not strive for the ideal of hayil alone.  Perhaps a better image for us today is not a single woman of hayil, but a community of hayil.  This text from Proverbs is not inviting us to be all things to all people, but instead is inviting all men and women to consider together what the tasks of a family, church, or community are, and to consider the ways we can share in those tasks together.[iii]  When we focus on only one woman, we miss that this text encourages us to think about the partnerships between men and women in the work of the community.  This text is not a beautiful hymn to one human woman, but is a lesson about interdependence, partnership, and the contours of community.[iv]

I see St. Margaret’s already at work to become a woman, a community, of hayil.  As our major fundraising event, the Fall Festival, approaches, I am amazed at the ways that you are together acting a people of hayil.  When I see our co-chairs struggling to do everything, I see others step in, volunteering for tasks or simply doing the tasks without being asked.  I see you using your time, talent, and treasure to help in the ways that you are most gifted.  I see you praying for one another, especially when one of us looks particularly overwhelmed or stressed.  In this moment, St. Margaret’s is living as the woman of hayil.

Of course, we still have work to do – we are still accomplishing the ideal as a community.  A priest friend of mine had a set of triplets in her parish.  She knew that the mother could not manage all three alone – one person only has two arms!  So, the priest arranged for a rocking chair in the narthex to help ease the babies’ tempers.  There were older women in the congregation who within seconds of a cry, would swoop up one of the babies and rock the child in the side aisle, without the mother having to even ask for help.  There were men who caught the crawling babies under pews and returned them to their mother.  And mostly, there were patient parishioners, who would focus through the cries of the children to hear the sermon without complaint.  We too can offer this grace to one another.  Whether there is a parent with a child who could use some help, whether there is a parishioner who needs a hand to get to the communion rail, or whether we offer prayers for someone who we notice is struggling this week, we are a community who can exemplify the holy partnership we see in scripture today.  We can acknowledge that our work is best accomplished together because our shared labor expresses faith, hope, and love in ways that build us up and bring us together.  We can all be that woman of hayil, that superwoman, but only if we do the work together.  Amen.

In our Gospel lesson today, Peter has just gotten Jesus to concede that he is the Messiah – the chosen one to lead the Israelites out of oppression forever.  Although Jesus was a little weird about keeping that news a secret, Peter is just happy to know that all his sacrifices have not been for naught.  For Peter, Jesus’ willingness to be called the Messiah means that Peter believes Jesus, “will purify [their] society, reestablish Israel’s supremacy among the nations, and usher in a new era of peace and holiness.”[i]  So when Jesus starts telling people that Jesus is going to have to suffer and die as the Messiah, Peter feels obligated to pull Jesus aside to correct Jesus.  Jesus must not remember that the Messiah is a triumphant king, not a defeated martyr.  All Jesus needs is a little rebuking.  Peter is simply being a good publicist, right?

If we see Peter this way – the good publicist simply trying to help Jesus – we miss what is really happening in our Gospel lesson today.  Peter is not acting out of selfless concern for Jesus.  Peter is acting out of his own desire for control.  Peter has decided that he knows what being a Messiah is, that Jesus is that same Messiah, and that Jesus is not acting how Peter thinks he should.[ii]  So he rebukes him in front of everyone.  In some ways, we can easily imagine why Peter desires to control Jesus.  His life has been out of control since the moment he left his boat to follow this crazy man.  Trying to control Jesus is the natural response of someone desperate for some normalcy.  For Peter, Jesus being the conquering Messiah will validate Peter’s decisions – but only if Jesus acts in accordance with the definition of a Messiah.  Every Jew knows what a Messiah is supposed to look like.  And if Jesus starts redefining the concept of Messiah, Peter will be left floundering, his life spinning even further out of control than his life already feels.

I am reminded of the very first Harry Potter movie.  If you are not familiar with Harry Potter, Harry and his friends, Hermione and Ron, are often found in sticky situations.  In the first movie, while trying to save the Sorcerer’s Stone, Harry, Hermione, and Ron fall into a pit.  At the bottom of the pit is a bed of vines that cushions their fall.  But they soon find that the vines are magical vines, which start weaving themselves around Harry and the others’ bodies.  The more they struggle, the tighter the vines wrap around their bodies.  Hermione remembers from class that the only way to escape one these plants is to totally relax your body – to surrender.  She relaxes, and her body sinks into the bed of vines, disappearing.  Harry and Ron freak out, but Hermione shouts from below that they just need to relax and they will reach the floor.  Harry listens to Hermione and relaxes his body and is also sucked in and released.  Ron, however, totally loses his cool.  He completely panics, and thrashes about so much that the vines wrap themselves around his screaming mouth.  After losing the battle of trying to convince Ron to relax, Hermione has to use a special spell to get the plant to release him.

Sometimes I think our relationship with God is a lot like Ron’s relationship with that strange plant.  We are creatures who want to be in control.  We want to control how our careers develop, what our relationships will be like, our plans for retirement, and the timing of major life events.  Although we are rarely successful, we try to control other people too – our family members, our friends, our co-workers.  And most of all, we try to control God.  We see this desire most readily in our prayer lives – we ask God for things, we pray for specific solutions to our problems, and we get angry with God when things do not go our way.  We rarely say those words that Jesus says, “Not my will but yours be done.”[iii]  And even more rarely do we sit in prayer with God and just listen.  When we examine our relationship with God, we are more likely to find our hands grasping tightly for control than to find ourselves with open hands, willingly ceding control to God.[iv]

The unfortunate thing about our desperate need for control is that we miss what God is trying to do in our lives – just like Peter.  In Peter’s mind, the only way to redeem and liberate the people of God is through powerful force.  When Peter grasps so desperately to that idea, he cannot even hear Jesus or imagine another way.  In his desperation to have control, he misses the fact that God knows another way – a way that not only solves their earthly troubles but saves their lives for eternity.  By being so controlling with Jesus, Peter is unable to really hear Jesus, and unable to understand the radically wonderful way that Jesus will not only redefine the concept of the Messiah, but will do so much more than the expected messiah could do.

The good news for Peter is that he is wrong.  Peter’s being wrong about what can be expected from the Messiah means that we all benefit much more.  Peter also reveals for us a little secret that most of us are still learning:  God is usually right about pretty much everything.  I know for our control freaks here today – and yes, I count myself as one of the control freaks – for our control freaks, we do not like admitting that the best course of action is to let go of control.  But what Peter helps us all do is remember that when you are ceding control to God, you are ceding control to someone who is always right and who knows infinitely more than we can imagine.

The challenge for us today, when we can finally cede control with Peter, is that there is more to the story.  In our gospel lesson, Jesus tells us that once we understand what a Messiah really is, we too must behave like a Messiah.  We too must follow the way of Christ – the way of the cross that leads to death.  That cross up there over our altar, the one that we hang everywhere, including around our necks, is not just a symbol for what Christ did for us.  That cross is a symbol for the life that we take up too.  The cross is not simply Jesus’ cross, but the cross is our cross.

But, if we can trust Jesus, trust God, if we can relax our bodies in those tangled vines that are trying to squeeze us the life out of us, we might just fall into the place where we need to be.  We might just realize that taking up our cross does not only lead to suffering; taking up our cross also leads to a glorious life of greater joy than we can imagine, and salvation beyond our wildest dreams, where death and suffering have no power over us.  When we move our hands from being tightly closed fists of control to open hands of trust and acceptance, we create space for God to rest in our hands, to show us the way.  The other side of those tangled vines of our desire for control is a glorious place.  All we have to do is let go and let God.  Amen.