Transcript of Sermon:

we are in mark 14 and this really is a brutal telling this chapter of mark we will be in mark 14 53-65 you can read it in your bulletin in your bible or on the screen in front of you this is what the scripture says peter followed him at a distance right into the courtyard of the high priest there he sat with the guards and warmed himself at the fire the chief of priests and the whole sanhedrin were looking for evidence against jesus so that they could put him to death but they did not find any many testified falsely against him but their statements did not agree then some stood up and gave false testimony against him we heard him say i will destroy the temple made with human hands and in three days i will build another not made with hands yet even then their testimony did not agree then the high priest stood up before them and asked jesus are you not going to answer what is the testimony that these men are bringing in against you but jesus remained silent and gave no answer again the high priest asked him are you the messiah the son of the blessed one i am said jesus and you will see the son of man sitting at the right hand of the mighty one and coming on the clouds of heaven the priest tore his clothes why do we even need any more witnesses he asked you have heard this blasphemy what do you think they all condemned him as worthy of death then some began to spit on him they blindfolded him struck him with their fists and said prophesy and the guards took him and beat him this is the word of god for the people of god i have shared with you on a few occasions that growing up and perhaps still today i might perhaps have been a stubborn child slash adult i might perhaps have been a difficult child to rear i feel sorry for my mother sorry again mom that i was a difficult teenager a difficult ten-year-old probably a difficult five-year-old but i will tell you right now as a teenager i felt fully completely righteous in my difficulty i was certain that all of my ways and all of my thoughts were correct i felt certain that the things that i wanted i deserved i felt certain that the ways that i thought were correct and a lot of that had to do with the fact that i started working when i was 12 years old not only was i working at 12 but by the time i could drive i was providing for myself on a lot in a lot of ways i was buying my own clothes i was um feeding myself most of the time i was pretty much self-sufficient except for the fact that i still lived in my parents house or my mother and my stepfather and i’ve shared with you i think that my stepfather was not the nicest of human beings and so i really didn’t stay home very often well during this season for some reason i decided i wanted a bunny rabbit and i decided that since i provided for myself most of the time for almost all of my things i deserved a bunny rabbit and that if i wanted one and i could pay for one then i should be able to have one and that’s basically what i told my mother and she because i am a hard-headed human being i don’t remember had much to say against it i know she didn’t want me to get one and i know that i ended up with one so i don’t really know how that conversation went but i know that i got my way and i know that i felt like that was the right thing to do and i remember having a conversation with my sister something to the effect of well what does she have to say i paid for it i’m going to take care of it i pay for all my other stuff i mean what is she gonna tell me i can’t have this thing i remember feeling fully justified in getting that rabbit well do you remember the part where i told you that my house was in chaos and i worked all the time so i was never home who needs a bunny rabbit when they’re never home perhaps that was one of my mother’s arguments when she told me that i shouldn’t get a bunny rabbit i don’t know i don’t remember but i don’t remember honestly and it makes me feel bad but i don’t really remember what happened to that money rabbit i don’t remember where it ended up or how it ended up i know i have a vague memory that i think my aunt and her children took it i think but i don’t know how it got there my mother probably had to end up doing something about it because this stubborn human being but i knew that i was righteous i deserved that thing i deserved it i worked hard i earned it but as humans we do that we can talk ourselves in and out of anything because we know we’re right we’re certain right and when we get into one of those ways of thinking what is typically fueling our thought patterns is actually fear now hear me it’s the fear of losing something that you want or the fear of losing something that you already have and when you look at the world around us today most of the division that you see in the world that we have today whether it’s in the world of politics a lot of that division is one side fighting with all that it has that they’re right because they don’t want to lose the power that they have right so that’s fear of losing the power that they have they can’t give in and say well maybe you’re right about these four things because if they say they’re right about these four things and they may lose the power that they have about the 95 other things or in relationships division in relationships happens because of that same type of fear if i apologize if i say that i’m wrong even if they’re half as wrong as i am even if they’re a hundred times more wrong as i am i’m gonna i’m gonna lose something in that because i’m right it’s the fear of losing my standing it’s the fear of losing my place a lot of times with our relationship with god we we negotiate or we don’t go to god because we’re afraid that god’s going to tell us no so we just don’t even go there it’s the fear of losing what we want it just keeps us from even having that conversation so we just don’t even go there we say oh i’m going to get that new car am i going to pray about it no because i’m pretty sure god likes what i like so i’m not going to pray about it because if i pray about it god might tell me no so that’s the fear of losing what we want and all of that leads us interestingly to this scripture because you see at a very deep level these patterns being played out by the chief priests the sanhedrin the law the teachers of the law and the scribes you see we have journeyed with jesus through the book of mark from the moment that he was baptized by john and he comes and he gets baptized and it’s this beautiful beautiful moment and then he goes into the desert and he is tested and he is tried and we learn from that and then he goes and he gets the disciples and he tells them to come and to follow him and then we see him teaching the disciples and we see them going out amongst the people healing the sick meeting with sinners encouraging sinners cavorting with sinners all along the way doing things that are unexpected but doing things that are deeply needed we see jesus coming to jerusalem for the very last time as people put palm branches on the ground crying hosanna knowing that the messiah has come we see jesus eating the last meal with his disciples washing their feet [Music] jesus telling them that he’s going to have to leave them he’s going to have to die and be killed in order for god’s ultimate purpose to reign we see the disciples not understanding we see the disciples rebuke jesus when he says you’re going to disown me when things get tough you’re going to disown me and then we finally come to this brutal telling here this brutal telling of jesus being arrested and being taken and tried for something he did not do and the whole time he’s being tried he’s tried six times six times and every trial is illegal and it’s illegal not by our standards it’s illegal by the standards put forth both by the jewish law that tried him some of those times and also by the roman law that tried him by their own laws the rules that they put forward they broke them every time they tried him they tried him at night they tried him secretly they tried him without an advocate all of these things were illegal they were so set and so certain that jesus was wrong that they had to do something about it and this is what we come to today you see these jewish leaders met a man named jesus and this man named jesus turned everything they believed in upside down they turned their world upside down they turned their belief system upside down their culture upside down and instead of processing that instead of thinking about it instead of wondering what god would have them to do about it instead of praying what god would have them to do about it in their self-righteousness in their surety that they are correct about who jesus is they hang him on a cross and the only way they can do that is falsely is illegally because jesus didn’t do anything wrong because jesus has god on his side did you ever stop to think what would have happened if any one of these chief of priests if any one of the sanhedrin if any one of the teachers of the law or the scribe had stopped to pray and to seek god and to say father who is this man what he’s doing seems to push against everything i’ve believed my whole life or everything i thought you would do my whole life what does that mean father if what he says is true i’m not sure what i’m supposed to do with the rest of my life how am i supposed to act in this moment tell me but we don’t see that in these people who are supposed to be the most holy of holy the leaders the ones who are supposed to show the rest of the jewish world how they’re supposed to see jesus and react to jesus and instead they decide through their fleshly bones that they know without a shadow of a doubt who jesus is and it’s because if jesus is who jesus says he is they are going to lose their place they are going to lose their status they are going to lose something that is important to them what they’re reacting is out of fear and what they do here is out of fear and it’s interesting to notice what happens in the moment they get what they want don’t they in the moment jesus gets arrested in the moment jesus gets tried in the moment jesus actually dies but in the end do they get what they want in the end does jesus’s influence on the world end in the end does jesus’s word stop no you see when you and i act in ways that work towards our own end that work to try and get the things that we want that work to try and secure our selfish hopes and dreams we might get what we want in the moment in the moment but in the big picture we’re never going to win in the big picture we’re only going to cause divisiveness and brokenness because that’s exactly what happened you see in the jewish culture when the leaders of the jewish world created all of this division that division stayed when jesus died when jesus died the people didn’t come back together as one united front they continued to be divided about who jesus was still to this day the jewish religion is divided about who jesus was and is there are some who believe that jesus is the son of god jews for jesus there are some who believe that jesus was not he was just a teacher still to this day there are people in the jewish culture who are divided about who jesus is then there’s this whole group of people called christians a whole lot of them granted we fight too don’t we and you know what we fight about you know what we argue about we argue about this we argue about translations of this we argue about theological discussions about this about who says what jesus said is right about this i say that what jesus said is this well i said that what jesus said is this we fight about our translation our who’s right about what this means and you know we have over we have tens of thousands of denominations in this world that divide us as christians all because we cannot agree on what this says because some of us are so certain that i am right about my interpretation of this so i’m going to form this church and this denomination and you can go have your church in your denomination with your interpretation of this because you’re so certain of your interpretation of this but what does that cause it causes division it causes separation it makes what was supposed to be one body of christ right united together to do the work of god as one powerful group of people sharing the love of god united in christ it makes us divisions tens of thousands of divisions and then even in those divisions there’s guess what division because of the interpretation of the thing because we’re so certain we’re right about our interpretation of the thing and it’s all because we’re afraid that we’ll lose something in the mix so we have to at some point stop and ask ourselves what do we get out of this in the end have we stopped to ask god what god wants from us in this moment in your fight whatever your fight is in your struggle in your battle if you’re on facebook fighting politically i’m going to beg you to please stop stop you’re not going to change anybody’s mind you’re just adding to the noise and there’s a lot of noise there’s not a lot of love though if you’re on there loving people go to it love them some more give them some more love more love more better quote me on that oh love go love stop the division cause you guess what might be wrong as much as you think you’re right you might be wrong i know that i might be wrong but sometimes i’m so certain i’m right and then i step in it and i stink and then i gotta go say i’m sorry and that’s hard and it’s really really hard and i don’t like doing it but i i try my hardest to do it because that’s when god shines the most is when we mess up and then we go say we’re sorry but this what what what happened here to jesus in this moment was human beings falling prey to their fleshy bodies not seeking god not seeking god’s will not even looking at the prophecies that told them for hundreds of years that this is what was exactly going to happen they were just so darn certain they were right and they were comfortable with that decision yet history has shown that even though they got what they wanted in the moment they didn’t get what they wanted in the end and all that was left was a whole bunch of division that we’re still dealing with today the same is true in our families in our workplaces the same is true in our lives and so we can decide every day to be harbingers of love or we can be harbingers of division we can decide like jesus who the whole time when he was being told that he had done these things what did he say when he was being convicted when he was being said you did this and you did this and you did this what did he say not a stinking word not a word falsely accused a time and again he didn’t say a word the only time he spoke was to affirm the fact that he was the son of god so you and i can learn from that that when we go into this world we don’t need to go out there trumpeting that we are democrat or that we are republican or that we are um united methodist or that we’re presbyterian or that we are i don’t know whatever the other divisions are we can go out there trumpeting that we’re children of god and that we love you and that i love you whatever other names you put on yourself i love you and though we may not get along or we may disagree what i’m going to notice and what i’m going to pay attention to and what i’m going to respond to is love so those are the decisions we get to make today are we going to make ourselves known by the things that we are divisive about the things that we don’t agree with are we going to say silent when we are falsely accused are we going to stay silent when things go crazy and are we going to love instead like jesus did let us not live in our fear let us live through our identities as children of god let us pray god it is hard it is hard to be in this world that is so divisive and it is so sure of it is opinions it’s hard not to add our opinions into the mix but god there is so much noise out there and there’s so little love help us lord to be like jesus and to only speak through our identities as your children harbingers of light and of love it’s in the name of christ we pray amen