September 29: Stumbling on the Way

Rena Turnham

                                                              

The Venerable Rena Turnham

Proper 21

September 29, 2024

St. John’s Episcopal Church

Mark 9:38-50

“Stumbling on The Way”

 

 

Today’s Gospel picks up where we left off last Sunday, with the disciples arguing about who’s the greatest.

They’ve moved from debating who gets the credit to worrying about who’s on the team and who’s not.

In today’s passage from Mark, Jesus offers tough truths about being one of his followers. He lays out what it means to live in Christian community and follow the Way of Love—a way that is demanding and difficult.

Jesus’ words are stark and even grotesque.

He isn’t literally telling his followers to maim themselves, but he uses strong imagery to get their attention because they’re still not fully grasping the nature of the Way of Love.

He’s challenging them to reflect on what keeps them from living in the way God intends for them.

What are the stumbling blocks preventing them from following Jesus? What is stopping them from living out the Way of Love?

I think we can all relate to this. I know I can.

I can quickly identify the habits and behaviors that trip me up, that keep me from fully embodying the Way of Love each day. And I know that often, I am my own obstacle. It’s not always external forces; it’s my own choices and reactions to life’s challenges that cause me to lose my way.

Recently, I experienced this firsthand during a medical leave from St. John’s. My body, overwhelmed by the stresses of life, manifested this strain in a seizure and other serious health issues.

I found myself face down on the path of the Way of Love, literally and figuratively.

This was a gateway to humility—a moment to stop, collect myself, and, with the help of God and others, get back up.

I saw clearly how I stumble and how I sometimes create stumbling blocks for others, whether intentionally or not. During my time away more subtle habits and patterns became illuminated in my view and I had a chance to stop and try new ways to unwind and connect with God.

I relearned how to be well rested, clear headed, how to quiet my mind, how to concentrate, how to listen and be present, to God and to others, and to simplify. This took intention, perseverance, self-compassion, letting go, and a lot of support from others.

This is what it means to be human and to walk the Way of Love.

Life is messy, isn’t it? And Jesus knows this.

In this passage, I hear him telling his followers to wake up—to realize that following him is not about them, but about him.

It’s about the Way of Love.

Whoever is FOR the Way of Love is WITH Jesus, and that means making room for others, clearing the path, and getting out of the way of what God is doing and getting on board with it.

It’s a call to stop being roadblocks and to recognize that something bigger than us is happening.

While this text may seem full of judgment, there’s also generosity, grace, and spaciousness present.

Jesus isn’t shutting us down when we fall; instead, he’s inviting us to keep moving, to get back up after we stumble, to lean on one another and to keep walking the Way of Love with our scars, bruises, and broken hearts. This is what it means to live in Christian community: helping to hold one another in love as we strive to share that love with a world in desperate need of it.

Maybe this is what saltiness is—our faithfulness to the journey, despite its difficulty.

It’s the sweat on our brows, the tears on our cheeks, our perseverance through life’s joys and life’s suffering.

To lose our way isn’t to stumble; it’s to stop stumbling altogether, to stop moving, and to become complacent.

In Christian community, complacency can be deadly. It leads us away from God and God’s will for us.

This complacency is also a danger for the church as a whole. Many say this is how we’ve ended up with a denomination in decline, with many congregations on the brink of institutional death.

I don’t believe St. John’s is one of these congregations…nor does your leadership-our wardens, our clergy, our bishop, our staff, vestry, and our Sustainable Mission Team.

At the core of our sustainable mission ministry is the belief that we can secure a Spirit-led future by faithfully following the Way of Jesus.

It’s NOT about finding ways to afford the future that looks like the past or the present; it’s about discerning where God is calling us and committing ourselves fully to that direction. This discernment requires deep listening—to God, to one another, to our ancestors, and to the earth. Listening, trusting, and letting go are some of the hardest parts of walking the Way of Love, and they’re essential.

Bishop Loya highlighted this in his recent weekly email to the diocese, where he asked us,

“Can we re-learn what it’s like to live as if God really is God? Can we re-learn what it feels like to experience God as an active agent in our lives, our communities, and the wider world? Can we hold our plans lightly and become friends with not knowing what comes next?”

He reminds us that, while we make plans, the life of faith calls us to be open to where the Spirit is leading.

Our efforts alone don’t sustain the church or the world; God’s power does. Our job is to steep ourselves in scripture and prayer, to be attuned to what God is doing, and to hitch our lives to that.

And Bishop Loya issues an invitation to us when he says,

“Can we learn together, in the midst of suffering and challenge, to see our lives as a spontaneous, improvisational journey, skipping from rock to rock, sometimes scared or frustrated, but often joyfully encountering God’s reckless, uncontainable, world-saving love?”

These words from our dear bishop are both pastoral and prophetic. They challenge us to reflect on our life together at St. John’s, within the wider context of this community, The Episcopal Church, and the world.

They invite us to listen for where God is calling us as a congregation to be love, show mercy, and pursue justice, in ways we may not be comfortable.

After the murder of George Floyd, this congregation began to engage in challenging conversations around racial justice and healing. This congregation has begun to wrestle with the idea of a land acknowledgment, and the will it takes to couple these kinds of statements with concrete action.

We are learning the truth about our history in this state, about the death camps, the executions, and the boarding schools. And we have stumbled.

We have sometimes stopped and become paralyzed. But stumbling is part of the journey. The question is: What keep us from going forward? What do we need to keep going?

If we are putting Jesus at the center of our congregational life—if we are truly following Jesus and living the Way of Love—then we will continue to flourish. And by flourish, I don’t mean in terms of numbers or institutional success, but in our ability to wrestle with what it means to follow The Way of Love in ways that challenge us and to send out more followers of Jesus into the world as agents of God’s love, healing, peace, justice, and mercy. That’s our mission. That’s what it means to be the church.

At St. John’s, this is the heart of our sustainable mission: removing the obstacles and clearing the path so we can walk the Way of Love together into the future. It’s not for our sake, but for the sake of those we are called to welcome, to embrace, and to serve—the people we cannot yet see or name. Can we, as Bishop Loya asks, become friends with this idea and trust in God’s wisdom?

This brings us to the five core values that define who we are at St. John’s: Sacredness, Belonging, Nourishment, Creativity, and Transformation.

These values aren’t abstract; they guide how we live and move as a community. Sacredness reminds us to honor the divine in all things. Belonging calls us to create space for everyone. Nourishment in faith, especially through our worship and sacraments, sustains us for the journey. Creativity inspires us to imagine new ways of being the church. And Transformation is what we seek for ourselves and the world as we follow Jesus.

These values guide our mission, today and into the future, ensuring that we stay on the path of love, even when it’s hard, even when we stumble.

We are called to wonder together about the institutional stumbling blocks we face.

What are the things we trip over, the distractions that keep us from our mission?

What needs to be let go, pruned, or even torn down so we can be made new again and reoriented toward a Christ-centered life?

There is an urgency to this moment, not just for St. John’s, but for the world. The life of our beloved institution and the life of the world are inextricably linked. What is really at stake here? Does this matter? And to whom does it matter?

Our ministry of sustainable mission is about investing in ourselves, our community, and our mission—investing in following Jesus and living the Way of Love…to do the arduous work of moving beyond our own needs, and beyond charity to justice, reconciliation, and reparations.

 

This week, our beloved bishop, Craig Loya, has chosen to join with a handful of others from the Episcopal Church in Minnesota at Bdote, at the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers, the birthplace of the Dakota people. This is also the very site of their death camp, Fort Snelling. And this is within a mile of the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building, the site of the five-state area regional immigration court and detention center.

This is the sacred place chosen to offer blessings in many languages for Sean Rowe, our newly elected Presiding Bishop.

To stand in this place and offer blessings is an act of compassion, acceptance, courage, and responsibility, and it offers us an invitation in a particular way in which we can choose to continue to walk the Way of Jesus, the Way of Love. This is not for the faint of heart.

We have much work to do, to continue to walk the Way of Love. With God’s help, the salt of the sweat of our brows and the tears of our hearts will carry us forward.

May it be so.

Amen

 

10am Service