Sunday, September 29, 19th Sunday after Pentecost
“A Cup of Water”
Psalm 72:1-8; Isaiah 12:1-6; Philippians 2:14-18; Mark 9:38-50
Service of Prayer and Preaching, p. 260
Hymns: #435 “Come to Calvary’s Holy Mountain”; #605 “Father Welcomes”; #712 “Seek Ye First”; #857 “Lord, Help Us Walk Your Servant Way”; #805 “Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow”; #851 “Lord of Glory, You Have Bought Us”
Dear Friends in Christ,
Grace, mercy, and peace to you, from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus. Amen.
A few years ago, I had a chance to talk to a man for maybe ten or fifteen minutes. He just dropped by my office needing someone to talk to. He had a drinking problem, he said, that he’d struggled against but couldn’t shake, and it was ruining his life. I don’t remember exactly what I told him, but it was something I’d told people in similar circumstances before. I pointed out how there’s a reason they call alcohol a spirit, and how it can be an evil spirit, and a competing spirit, and an idol that has us breaking the First Commandment, if we let it come between us and God. That was all. The conversation was short, I prayed with him, and the man thanked me and went quickly on his way, and that’s the last I saw of him. I didn’t think any more about it; until he showed up again maybe three years later, just to tell me that that one little conversation had helped him get sober, saved his marriage, and brought him back to God. I didn’t think I’d done much of anything. It was nothing, really. Just a few minutes, a few words. Who knew?
I’d like to accomplish great things for God. I’d like to do, at least once, something fantastic that the world will remember me for, and that God will praise me for. I love the Lord, and I want to do great things for Him. I will confess, though, that this job I have, this “pastor thing,” makes me feel so inadequate sometimes. I love things I can fix; but I really hate those things I can’t do anything about. If I could do miracles for you, God knows I would; but the truth is, I can’t. If they’d given me a magic wand, or a staff like God gave Moses, back when I was ordained, believe me, I would use it - bing, bing, bing… But miracles are God’s job, and beyond my poor human power.
My saving grace – and yours - is that for all the great things we can’t do, our Lord has given us lots of little things that we can. There’s a curious old saying that says, “Great is the enemy of good.” What that means is that if we spend all our time and energy trying to do great things for God, we can lose sight of all the little things He puts in front of us that we can do every day – like that giving a cup of water to a child that Jesus talks about in our Gospel.
That cup of water is a metaphor. It stands for every good thing, large or small, that we can do for our fellow human beings. It’s a kind word spoken. It’s a dollar or two in a can or a kettle. It’s a donation to a food bank (or to Orphan Grain Train!) It’s a flaw or an irritation or a poorly spoken word that we choose to overlook. It’s choosing to have mercy and being quick to forgive. It’s taking the time to listen to someone’s story and trying to understand where they’re coming from. It’s reaching out to someone and offering to be a friend. It’s gently and kindly and patiently pointing a new friend to Jesus. It’s what the 12-step programs call “reaching out to love the unlovely.”
None of those “cup of water” things are going to bring people into the Church by the dozens or hundreds or thousands. None of them really require a Synod evangelism program (although some of those are good), or memorizing a script, or knocking on doors. Instead it’s those little things, just those cups of water we can offer, that will make the greatest difference to the people God puts in our path every day.
In last week’s Gospel, Jesus had told His disciples that whoever wanted to first among them had to make himself last and be the servant of all. And He took a child in His arms and said, "Whoever welcomes one of these little children in My name welcomes Me; and whoever welcomes Me does not welcome Me but the one who sent Me." And then John, in our Gospel today, answers, "Teacher, we saw a man driving out demons in Your name and we told him to stop, because he was not one of us." What John was asking, I think, was, “Teacher, were we right to stop him? Did we do the right thing?” Jesus’ answer is, “No, John, you were wrong.” "Do not stop him," Jesus said, “because no one who does a miracle in My name can in the next moment say anything bad about me, for whoever is not against us is for us.” The point is that the miracles, the big things, when they do happen, belong to God. You and I can’t do them or perform them. If God chooses to give us a miracle, it will be in a time or place or circumstance of His own good choosing. If He works one of those miracles through someone else – through another Church body, another denomination, through someone who isn’t “one of us” – our place isn’t to be skeptical or jealous or try to throw cold water on it, but to praise God for what He’s done.
And if, by His grace, some miracle is done here among us, by God’s grace and in answer to our prayers, then we can thank God all the more and give Him all the glory that’s He’s chosen to bless us by using us that way. God does show His power in wonderful ways sometimes, for the strengthening of our faith, and we can thank and praise Him for that when He does. But miracles, by definition, are extraordinary things; otherwise they’d be “ordinaries.” And again, Jesus’ point is that God most often does His best work through the smaller and humbler things, and through small and humble people. I may never get to be a conduit for a mighty miracle – but the Lord can still use these hands and feet of mine to touch people’s lives just the same.
Jesus says, “I tell you the truth, anyone who gives you a cup of water in my name because you belong to Christ will certainly not lose his reward.” When we come to stand before God, He isn’t going to ask us how many miracles we did; He’s going to ask about those little cups of water, those little acts of kindness and mercy that we did in Jesus’ name, out of love for people and out of love for Him. “What you did for the least of these brothers of mine, you did for Me,” He says.
When Jesus talks about “causing the little ones who believe in Me to sin,” He isn’t talking only about little children, necessarily, although they are a big part of the picture. He’s also talking about “little ones” in faith, anyone of any age whose faith is small because they haven’t been taught what they need to know, or because they’ve been beaten up by life and broken by the world. Causing one of those little ones to sin, by deliberately involving them in our own sin, would be a terrible thing, something God will surely punish. But we can also cause others to sin by being passive, by ignoring their needs, by shutting our ears when they ask for our help, and by holding back that cup of water when we have a chance to give it. Jesus says in another place, “The things that cause sin are bound to come, but woe to the one through who they come.” Anyone who could see some poor soul in need and pass them by without a little tug on the heart or a tweak of conscience… you see there what Jesus says about the millstone.
Jesus says here that if your hand causes you to sin, you’d be better off cutting it off and throwing it away. (That’s a metaphor; don’t do it!) But that hand of yours can be used for good or bad. The same hand that can hold out a cup of water can also be balled into a fist. Same with our feet. We can use these feet of ours to walk to where help is needed, or we can use them to stomp or kick, or just to turn and walk away. And we can open these eyes of ours to “look at the fields,” or choose to be blind and pretend not to see. What we choose to do these hands and feet and eyes God has given us, so often show where our hearts are.
When Jesus talks about being thrown into hell, “where the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched,” that is no metaphor. Heaven is real, and a good and holy and happy place; but hell is just as real. What we’re doing here on earth – you and I who love and believe and trust in Jesus – is to keep everyone we can from ending up in that awful place. Jesus died on a cross to pay for our sins and for the sins of everyone in the world, and He was raised on an Easter Day to give us all the hope of life. Everyone needs to know that if they’re going to be saved and come to live in Heaven with us; and it’s those little cups of water, those little cups of mercy, that will give us a chance to make the Good News heard. Some people have been saved by seeing or experiencing miracles, thanks be to God for it. But most people are saved because someone did some little thing for them, and took the time tell them about Jesus. “Redeeming the time,” St. Paul called that.
“Everyone will be salted with fire,” Jesus says. The fire is the fire of the Holy Spirit. The good Holy Spirit calls out to everyone, and God’s invitation to come and live goes out to everyone, because God loves all His children. The Spirit comes in many ways, and as He chooses; but mostly He comes through the faithful and quiet witness of people like us, and by those cups of water.
“Salt is good,” Jesus says. Another metaphor! The salt is faith! “Having salt in us” means taking the faith that’s in us and sharing it; “Out of the saltshaker and into the world,” one writer has called it. To lose our saltiness is to lose our desire, to lose our zeal, to lose our fire, to want to tell everyone about our Savior and bring them into our fellowship. May the Lord keep us a salty, fiery, cup-of-water-giving Church, person to person, heart to heart, soul to soul, until everyone we know has the peace we have.
“With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation,” prophet Isaiah says. “In that day you will say: ‘Give thanks to the Lord , call on His name; make known among the nations what He has done, and proclaim that His name is exalted. Sing to the Lord, for He has done glorious things; let this be known to all the world.’” Lord, may what You have poured into us now pour out from us. In Jesus’ name; Amen.