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Rian Adams
A few months ago I had the privilege to sit down for a Q&A interview with Dr. Dan Finley. Dan writes for Go! Magazine. This section is called Chat with a Pastor. Go! Magazine is a Christian publication that circulates along the emerald coast of Florida. Below is the interview!
A Special thank you to Dr. Dan Finley, a man whom I consider a friend and a great example of a Christian who looks for ways to give back to the community and the world. I also know his students at Gulf Coast College appreciate his humor.
Also, my gratitude goes out to Patti Smith for allowing me to be part of her publication. Patti loves Jesus and seeks ways to express her faith with kindness. Please give Go! Magazine a look!
As always, remember that you are love.
Proper 9, Year B. Sermon from 2 Cor. 12:2-10
Synopsis: Paul encountered some other “apostles” who tried to undermine his ministry citing grand spiritual visions. This reading is his response to them.
In the 1750s there was a worldwide conflict known to us as The French Indian war. The British and French battled for Quebec. Admiral Phipps, commander of the British fleet, received orders to anchor outside Quebec and wait for the British land forces. His job was simple; provide protection while the troops came ashore.
Admiral Phipps ran a well-oiled machine, his sailors were disciplined; hence, his Navy arrived to the scene early. The longer the admiral waited, the more annoyed he became by the statues of the French saints that adorned the towers of a nearby cathedral. In his rage, he commanded his men to shoot at them with the ships’ cannons.
No one knows how many rounds that Phipps fired or how many statues he knocked down, but what we do know is that when British ground forces arrived Phipps was of no help… He spent all his ammunition shooting at the saints.
It’s not fun to be in the crosshairs
I think Saint Paul understood what it meant to be in the crosshairs of his opponents. He was dealing with the collective firepower of various, self-proclaimed “apostles.” Their goal was to undermine Paul’s authority in the church he established.
Paul’s letter makes it clear that he was dealing with spiritual children. They watched until Paul left and suddenly swooped in to tell everyone that Paul was not on the same spiritual height as they were.
These rival missionaries were very convincing. They had all the canned answers. They were masters of rhetoric and boasted of revelations and visions from God. They captivated the Corinthians as they told stories of their vast spiritual experiences.
They targeted Paul’s ministry with cannonballs of deceit. “Paul, well, ya know… he’s okay, he has met with the other apostles in Jerusalem, but we are so filled with the Spirit that God speaks personally to us. He has given us special revelations that are not accessible to Paul.”
Sometimes the Pastor has to flip the script
This is the occasion for our epistle lesson this morning; Paul couldn’t be physically present to defend himself, so he sent a letter. His language was firm, his sarcasm was apparent, and we can tell that his patience reached its natural limits. He banters with them; “I could boast of revelations that God has given me, but I won’t. I could tell you how much I’ve endured; shipwrecks, floggings, beatings, death threats and days without food, but I won’t go there either.”
“Oh, you think visions are the measurement for spirituality? Well, I know a man God called to the third heaven; there he saw things that God forbade him to speak. Sure I can tell you about those things, but I’m not!”
Instead, Paul employed one of Jesus’ most successful tactics; he turned the argument upside down. “You want me to boast about my accomplishments? Well, let me tell you about this thorn I have, it keeps me humble!”’
Paul’s Thorn
I respect him even when I do not agree with him. He took the Gospel all around the Mediterranean world. He even changed the essence of the church to include non-Jews. I want to know what this thorn in his flesh was. Maybe then I can take him off a pedestal and let him be the human being he was.
Part of me wants to know his secret struggle. This thorn has been a hotly disputed issue by scholars for centuries. Some say Paul’s struggle was his eyesight, or maybe his sexuality. Others say he suffered great shame because he formerly oppressed the church.
What are our thorns?
Some have suggested that Saint Paul suffered from seizures. That hits close to home. I know what it’s like to stand in front of people, hoping that I don’t zone out for a few seconds.
We want to know what this thorn was, and why it injured him so thoroughly. However, I think it’s a powerful statement that Paul’s thorn remained unknown. Had he put a name on it, perhaps all of us couldn’t identify with it. As it stands, most of us can categorize that one thing that constantly plagues us.
Maybe you have prayed for God to fix over and over and over. But God doesn’t fix it. Thorns… are spiritually exhausting!
Sometimes the thorn can even make us question God’s goodness or even God’s love. Living with a thorn is emotionally draining and spiritually exhausting.
We all have thorns, even Paul. He even prayed that God would remove it. Repeatedly he sought God’s intervention. Finally, God replied, “My grace is sufficient.”
Paul says in his letter, “Those super-apostles want to boast… I’ll boast that my thorn has taught me more about God’s grace than all their visions combined.”
Consider that for a moment. Paul was a man of keen intellect and persuasive powers so strong he founded multiple churches around the Roman world. He was the most educated of the apostles. Paul was one of the privileged few who studied under Gamaliel. Some credit as the founder of Christianity.
He could have “patted his own back.” Yet his bragging point, his measuring stick, was his frailty, a weakness that taught him to rely on Christ.
Is Christ present?
Relying on Jesus assures us that God will sustain us through difficulty and distress. God’s grace will keep us resilient through pain, penalty, and personal tragedy. God’s love will support us, stand with us, and supply a peace that surpasses understanding!
The real miracle is not when God removes the thorn… but when God gives us the grace of the Holy Spirit and we grow despite the thorn.
The thorn hurts, and that pain tells us we should call on God.
Paul told the Corinthians, “It hurts that you’re allowing these other “super apostles” to gossip, but I deal with a thorn that is much worse. As such, I know that God’s grace is sufficient in this current struggle because I’ve endured so much before this even happened.”
The petty people don’t matter anyway…
There’s something in this lesson that’s able to change our lives if we can internalize it: Just as the thorn is unnamed, so are Paul’s opponents. They, and the cannons they fired at Saint Paul, fade into the first-century obscurity. No one remembers them; parishes do not bear their names. Yet churches around the world display the name of a man who boasted of strength built in weakness.
After all, God chose the hideous mockery of the crucifixion and turned it into an abundance of grace. Let us always be mindful that God’s grace IS sufficient.
Amen.
Proper 10, Year B. July 11th, 2021. Mark 6:14-29. Herod Beheads John the Baptist
Synopsis: Herod Antipas, the ruler of Galilee, arrested John the Baptist for preaching that his marriage to his brother’s former wife was not right in God’s eyes. This caused Herod’s new wife, Herodias, to desire John’s death. At Herod’s birthday, when he was drunk, she finally had her chance, and John’s head wound up on a platter at the dinner table.
Well… that Gospel reading isn’t a bedtime story you want to read your children. I asked my wife, “How am I supposed to preach a sermon about a King who steals his brother’s wife, an ‘erotic dancer,’ and a grasshopper-eating prophet?” She said, “Well, don’t lead with that.” She’s probably right, so I took her advice.
This one is not easy to preach or easy to hear. I like sermons that give me something to think about or sermons that make me say, “I needed that today.” This reading about John’s death doesn’t provide those warm fuzzies.
It’s not easy to find the spiritual application of the story; it’s a challenge even to know where to look to find the moral of the story?
The moral of the story certainly is not justice. John lived a good life before God and preached the truth, but In the end, it cost him his head.
So what is the reading trying to show us that we can apply to our lives in a post-pandemic world?
Background
Hold that question in your mind; we will come back to it.
This almost seems like this is a Star Wars movie. It’s as if we’ve been thrown into episode IV, but we need to return to Episode I to get the backstory.
We might benefit from a little bit of the back story to Herod Antipas and his relationship with John the Baptist.
Herod was the ruler of the region where John and Jesus lived. While vacationing in Rome, his brother’s wife caught his eye. One thing led to another, and it turned into a captivating soap opera. They apparently fell in love and ran off together.
One person’s treasure is another…. Well, let’s just say Phillip was apparently elated to see her go.
When Herod returned, John the Baptizer had a fire and brimstone Baptist sermon ready for him. John said it was wrong for him to steal his brother’s wife and marry her.
Then the predicament began; Herod liked John before his new marriage. The Gospels even say he listened to John with curiosity. But His new illegal wife, Herodias, loathed the prophet and patiently waited for an excuse to kill him.
That opportunity came when Herod hosted a birthday party for himself.
His stepdaughter, Salome, provided some entertainment and danced for Herod and the drunk generals, CEOs, and celebrities in attendance. I’m sure this dance was the box step.
The dance was so modest that it caused Herod to promise to give her anything she wanted… up to half his kingdom.
That sounds like the Flo Rida song from a few years ago, “I fell in love with a dancer.”
So Salome ran to her mother to ask, “what should I request?” That was finally her mother’s moment. She tried to get Herod to kill John, but he wouldn’t, but now Herod overextended himself. “The head of John the Baptist,” she said.
We know there was a conflict in Herod. He didn’t want to kill John. The reading said, “He feared John knowing he was a righteous man, and he wanted to protect him. For he liked to listen to John, even when it left him perplexed.”
But the text says that he went through with the execution anyway. Maybe it was to save face in front of his guests. It could have been a dedication to his word. Maybe he didn’t want to deal with his wife. Perhaps he knew his reputation would take a hit if he didn’t kill John.
We can see the conflict in the King.
Two Types of Truth Tellers
Allow me a parenthetical insert into this story. There are two types of people we usually can’t stand; the ones who lie to us… and the ones who have a gift of always telling us the truth.
I’ll never forget the first time I got in trouble for telling the truth.
It was thanksgiving lunch at my aunt’s house. I was about eight years old—old enough to hear plenty of Sunday school lessons on the importance of telling the truth.
My mother wanted to engage in the proper social etiquette and compliment the hostess on the food. “How’s lunch?” my mother asked me, anticipating that I would be her pawn in the etiquette game. I spoke my truth, “This turkey is dry as a bone.” I said.
That’s when non-verbal communication ensued between eight-year-old Rian and his mother. Later I received instructions to lie if necessary to save face.
Well, John didn’t like the turkey, told the truth about it, and he paid for it with his life.
Is there a moral to the story?
So, back to my original question, what should we do with a story about a King who stole his brother’s wife, threw a party for himself, promised a stripper half of his kingdom in front of a room full of drunk politicians, then had a conservative prophet killed to save face?
It’s tempting to just dismiss it as the tragic tale of John the Baptist’s death and admit there isn’t much we can glean from it.
One scholar I read last week said we just discard it as something that happened before the enlightenment—before we were developed enough to know better than to perpetuate such barbarism.
However, Let’s not write it off too quickly because some things never change, even 2,000 years later. At present, perhaps more than ever, we live in an age of corruption much like John.
People are still quick to treat marriages and relationships like disposable contracts and leave their significant other’s whenever it feels good.
So to say we have intellectually progressed past “such barbarisms” is naïve at best.
Who am I in the passage?
What if the story’s point is not as much about John’s death as it is about Herod’s missed opportunity?
The story almost reminds me of King Lear… Perhaps Shakespeare would call this “The Tragedy of Herod Antipas.”
See if you resonate: I have a tendency, you probably do too if you’re at the thanksgiving table of honesty, to place myself in the role of the hero. I like to see myself as John… the great prophet who speaks truth to power, who stands at the gates of the capital telling Herod of his sin.
The truth is I’m probably guilty of distancing myself from people who speak hard reality in my life. I’ve been guilty of trying to impress the important people in front of me to the detriment of those who really mattered.
I’ve even gripped about the preacher while others were too, even though secretly I liked him and listened to him.
The true tragedy of Herod is that when he faced difficult decision points, he took the easy path because it took less spirituality and less integrity. After the death of Jesus, his wife’s brother defeated him in a power struggle with the Roman emperor and convinced the emperor that Herod would lead a revolt against Rome.
Emperor Caligula banished him to Spain, where, Like King Lear, he slowly went insane before the emperor sent an assassin to kill him and his wife, Herodias.
Where is Jesus in the passage?
This is the only story in his Gospel that does not revolve around Jesus. No wonder it feels hopeless; Christ isn’t in it. I think Mark wanted us to realize that when Jesus isn’t the center of the story, the results are tragic and hopeless.
Where is that grain of truth? It’s that we’re all a little bit like Herod.
We’re complex, and we have various people and places and ideas tugging at our souls from a myriad of directions. We all write our stories. We all have twists and turns we did not expect that test our character. It’s who we are, and it’s the decisions we make in the times of tension that ultimately pen our history.
But we have the opportunity to write Jesus at the center of the story.
Amen.